财政赤字、通货膨胀与债务危机——陈云对赤字财政的有关思想及其现实启示

"坚决不打赤字财政",是陈云一贯而鲜明的主张,因为在他看来,财政赤字与通货膨胀密不可分。建国初期,我国人民饱受通货膨胀之苦,而"币值下跌、物价上涨的主要原因,是政府的财政赤字庞大"。因此,陈云力主财政安排留有余地,尽量避免出现赤字,尤其忌讳将赤字用于投资。在这一思想的主导下,计划经济时期我国财政预算保持平衡,物价基本稳定。新时期以来,我国经济体制和市场环境发生重大变化,财政赤字渐成常态,相应地物价亦呈不断上涨趋势。尽管近年来连年出现的财政赤字主要依靠发行公共债务来弥补,但这终究不是长久之计,当下的欧债危机警醒了我们,陈云提出的"建设规模的大小必须和国家财力物力相适应"是一条不变的真理。     

Comparative analyses of fiscal sustainability of the budgetary policy rules

We construct a continuous-time overlapping generations model with an endogenous growth structure and consider fiscal sustainability under two fiscal rules: (i) the government fixes the budget deficit-to-GDP ratio and (ii) the government fixes the primary balance-to-GDP ratio. Under the constant budget deficit-to-GDP rule, fiscal sustainability is ensured when the initial public debt-to-GDP and budget deficit-to-GDP ratios are sufficiently small. Under the constant primary balance-to-GDP rule, it is difficult to ensure fiscal sustainability when the primary balance is in deficit or zero. However, fiscal sustainability is ensured when the primary balance is in surplus and the initial government debt-to-GDP ratio is sufficiently small.     

Promoting sustainable public finances in the European Union: The role of fiscal rules and government efficiency

New indices of fiscal rule strength are constructed and, using a dynamic panel econometric model for 27 EU countries over the period 1990–2012, we assess whether national fiscal rules alone help to promote sustainable public finances in the EU or whether they must be supported by good governance in order to be effective. We find that fiscal rules are effective in reducing structural primary deficits at all levels of government efficiency. However, the effect is smaller as government efficiency increases, indicating that fiscal rules and government efficiency are institutional substitutes in terms of promoting fiscal sustainability. We also find that balanced budget rules are the most effective form of fiscal rules. Multiple fiscal rules are found to enhance fiscal solvency. Other institutional features that enhance the effectiveness of fiscal rules are transparency of policies and commitment to implementation of fiscal programs. Supranational rules, however, do not affect the effectiveness of national fiscal rules in reducing the deficit bias. Our results are robust to alternative estimation methods and endogeneity assumptions.     

Fiscal policy asymmetries and the sustainability of US government debt revisited

This paper empirically investigates US fiscal policy sustainability and cyclicality in an empirical structure that allows fiscal policy responses to exhibit asymmetric behavior. We investigate this over two quarterly intervals, both of which begin in 1955:1. The short sample ends in 1995:2 and is most similar to the one used by Bohn (Q J Econ 113:949–963, 1998), whereas the full sample ends in 2013:3. Our estimation results show that the full sample period is sufficiently different from the short sample period, that the asymmetric (nonlinear) empirical models used in this paper are important and that the sustainability of US government debt topic needed to be revisited. Indeed, the short sample provides evidence of fiscal policy sustainability in line with Bohn’s (1998) findings. However, when considering the full sample, US fiscal policy is found sustainable during good economic times only according to the best fitting nonlinear model, but unsustainable for all specifications studied during times of distress. With regard to cyclicality, both samples show policy is asymmetric. Moreover, both samples show countercyclical policy during times of distress and the full sample results show some evidence that policy may be procyclical during good economic times.     

Fiscal Deficit and Economic Growth Nexus in India: A Simultaneous Error Correction Approach

This paper examines the impact of fiscal deficit on economic growth in India, during the period from 1970–71 to 2018–19. Using a combination of Autoregressive Distributed Lag and Simultaneous Error Correction Approach, this study shows that fiscal deficit and revenue deficit have an adverse effect on economic growth both in the long run and in the short run. The empirical analysis confirms that fiscal deficit influences economic growth both directly, and indirectly through the routes of investment, interest rate, current account deficit and composition of government expenditure. Further, gross investment has a positive and inflation rate has a negative impact on economic growth. For a policy perspective, the government should control fiscal deficit and revenue deficit as suggested by the FRBM Act. The composition of government expenditure should be altered to devote more resources for the formation of productive capital in India.

     

Government spending and revenues in Sweden 1722–2011: evidence from hidden cointegration

This study examines the long-run causal relationship between government revenues and spending of the Swedish economy over the period 1722–2011. The results based on hidden cointegration technique and a modified version of the Granger non-causality test, show that there exists a long-run and asymmetric relationship between government spending and government revenues. Our estimation results can be summarized into three main empirical findings. First, the government follows a hard budget constraint and soft budget constraint strategies in the case of negative and positive shocks, respectively. Second, negative shocks to the fiscal budget are removed fairly quickly compared to positive shocks. Third, bi-directional causality between revenues and expenditures offers support in favor of the fiscal synchronization hypothesis. The policy implication is that budget deficit’s reduction could be achieved through government spending cut, accompanied by contemporaneous tax controls.     

Is fiscal policy stationary in China? A regional study by local government

In this study, we apply a stationarity test with a flexible Fourier function proposed by Enders and Lee (2012) to test the stationarity of the deficit–GDP ratio in China. We find that our approximation has a higher power to detect U-shaped breaks and to smooth breaks than the linear method if the true data-generating process of the deficit–GDP ratio convergence is, in fact, a stationary non-linear process. The results show that the stationarity for fiscal policy varies across different regions and that the deficit–GDP ratio of half of the regions is stationary. The results related to the budget structural balance and the fiscal deficit indicate no expansion in the Eastern and Central regions. We find that China's provinces in these two regions meet the stability theory of fiscal policy in the current stage of development. The deficit–GDP ratio is not stationary in the Western and Northeastern regions. These results indicate that the fiscal deficits in these regions are expanding and cannot be controlled by automatic market adjustment, and the government should therefore avoid deficit expansion in favor of a balanced budget policy.     

Fiscal regime shifts in Portugal

We estimate changes in fiscal policy regimes in Portugal with a Markov Switching regression of fiscal policy rules for the period 1978–2007, using a new dataset of fiscal quarterly series. We find evidence of a deficit bias, while repeated reversals of taxes making the budget procyclical. Economic booms have typically been used to relax tax pressure, especially during elections. One-off measures have been preferred over structural ones to contain the deficit during economic crises. The EU fiscal framework prompted temporary consolidation, but did not permanently change the budgeting process.     

我国财政政策非线性效应的 实现机制及动态特征研究

本文基于财政调整时期的内生划分方法，采用STR模型对于我国1980-2012年间财政政策非线性效应的实现机制与动态特征进行实证分析，结果发现：一是我国财政政策非线性效应主要是经由消费渠道发生，而且是通过影响消费者预期产生。二是财政政策非凯恩斯效应在不同条件下与财政政策工具之间的搭配组合存在一定差异。其中，当基本预算余额/潜在GDP小于临界值-0045 0时，财政收入对居民消费需求存在非凯恩斯效应；反之，财政支出表现出一定程度的非凯恩斯效应。三是财政政策调整的幅度是居民消费需求非凯恩斯效应产生的重要因素，但财政政策调整的组成成分与政府的初始债务规模不是非凯恩斯效应产生的先决条件。本文研究结论不仅可以为政府制定财政政策提供理论依据与决策参考，还有助于改善我国财政政策实践的操作效率和运行效果。     

Examining Sustainability of Federal Finances in India: An Application of Non-Stationary Panel Methods

This paper examines the fiscal sustainability of Indian States during the 1990s on the basis of their budgetary data. Sustainability has been discussed using the inter-temporal budget constraint framework and has been tested by applying the panel co-integration technique. The panel analysis reveals that revenue receipts and revenue expenditures are co-integrated across the States. Further, the insensitivity of the results to the choice of the period of analysis attests robustness to the result that the State finances in India may not be unsustainable.

     

On the Sustainability of Austrian Budgetary Policies

The question whether fiscal policies are sustainable in the long run has received much attention in the international political agenda. In this paper, we investigate whether Austrian fiscal policy has been sustainable during the last four decades. We apply several econometric approaches to test for the sustainability of fiscal policies. The results are ambiguous. For the period of 1960–1974, we find evidence for sustainable fiscal policies. For the period 1975–1999, the results indicate that Austrian fiscal policy was not sustainable in the long run. If Austrian policy-makers do not change their budgetary policy in the future, the long-term budget constraint of the state will be violated.     

Non-linear budgetary policies: Evidence from 150 years of Italian public finance

We investigate the sustainability of Italy’s public finances from 1862 to 2012 adopting a non-linear perspective. Specifically, we employ the smooth transition regression approach to explore the scope for non-linear fiscal adjustments of primary surpluses in response to the accumulation of debt. The empirical results show the occurrence of a significantly positive reaction of primary surpluses to debt when the debt–GDP ratio exceeded the trigger value of 110 percent. The after-threshold positive response implies that the path of Italy’s fiscal policy is sufficiently consistent with the intertemporal budget constraint.     

Regime changes and fiscal sustainability in Kenya

Kenya's fiscal policy landscape is characterized by primary deficit spending forcing the government to rely on debt to meet its objectives. The justification often being that as a developing economy, annual growth rates and future prospects may in the short run justify the uptake of debt to finance infrastructural development. However, given potential fiscal limits, fiscal cycles usually alternates between sustainable and unsustainable regimes and this has a bearing on long run sustainability. This study therefore sought to investigate the nature of fiscal policy regime in Kenya and the extent to which fiscal policy is sustainable in the long run taking into account periodic regime shifts. Markov switching models were used to endogenously determine fiscal policy regimes. Regime switching tests were used to test whether No-Ponzi game condition and debt stabilizing condition were met. The results established that regime switching model was suitable in explaining regime sustainable and unsustainable cycles. An investigation of fiscal policy regimes established that both sustainable and unsustainable regimes were dominant, and each lasted for an average of four years. There was evidence to imply the existence of procyclical fiscal policy in Kenya. Regime switching tests for long run sustainability suggested that the No-Ponzi game condition weakly holds in the Kenyan economy. Regime-based sensitivity analysis indicated that persistence of unsustainability regime for more than 4 years could threaten long-run fiscal sustainability.     

Balanced-Budget Rules: Welfare Loss and Optimal Policies

Most economic models do not suggest an optimal fiscal policy in which the government's budget is balanced each period. Conventional wisdom suggests that the government run surpluses and deficits to smooth taxes. In this paper, I use an approach which brings together real business cycle theory and the theory of public finance to evaluate the effects of a balanced-budget restriction. Four fiscal policies are investigated in a model with growth. All models are solved numerically using a multidimensional collocation parameterized expectations algorithm. The welfare consequences of each policy are measured, and the optimal Ramsey policies are characterized. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: E62.     

Sustainability of public debt,public capital formation,and endogenous growth in an overlapping generations setting

Under the golden rule of public finance for public investment with a constant budget deficit/GDP ratio, we show that for the sustainability of government budget deficits there is a threshold of the initial public debt for a given stock of public capital, and that this threshold level of public debt is increasing in the stock of public capital. If the initial public debt is greater than the threshold, the government can no longer sustain budget deficits, while if it is smaller, the government can conduct a permanent deficit policy, which eventually leads to a positive public debt/GDP ratio.     

Fiscal space on the eurozone periphery and the use of the (partially) balanced-budget multiplier: The case of Spain

This article adopts the “functional finance” approach to consider the utilization of expansive fiscal policies in the members of the European Monetary Union most affected by high unemployment. As they do not have their own monetary policy, fiscal deficits require the issuing of public debt without the support of the central bank. The authors consequently incorporate the notion of a (partially) balanced-budget expansion to achieve the desired stimulus in gross domestic product (GDP) with the least possible effect on public debt. Their proposal is only a sort of “imperfect” balanced-budget expansion: It is based on the idea that simultaneous increases in public revenue and expenditure can boost GDP, but without any pretension of keeping public deficit unchanged. Specifically, the authors use the case of Spain to show that a more expansive fiscal policy is desirable on economic grounds, and that only institutional constraints prevent it. They do it presenting two alternative scenarios for the coming years and analyzing their different impact on unemployment and fiscal sustainability. The first represents a firm commitment to budget consolidation, whereas the second is based on this “imperfect” application of the balanced budget multiplier. The main conclusion is that a more expansive fiscal policy is perfectly compatible with finance sustainability.     

Targeting Debt and Deficits in India: A Structural Macroeconometric Approach

This study attempts to construct a consistent macroeconomic framework for India to review the macro-fiscal linkages over the 14th Finance Commission period, 2015–2019. A macroeconomic policy simulation model comprising of real, external, monetary, fiscal and macroeconomic block is built for the purpose. The estimated model is used for policy simulations to address three scenarios: (a) shock due to 7th Pay Commission award, (b) targeting deficit and debt and (c) targeting higher growth. The results suggest that while Pay Commission award would result in slightly higher growth compared to the base case, this also results in higher inflation, fiscal-revenue deficits, current account deficit as well as higher government liability. Further simulation results suggest that expenditure switching policy, which is the core of expansionary fiscal consolidation mechanism, of increasing higher government capital expenditure and reducing the government transfers could result in higher growth with a manageable fiscal deficit of 5.3% that also brings down the government (centre plus states) liability to around 60% by 2019–2020.

     

Is Fiscal Policy Sustainable in Developing Economies?

This paper investigates fiscal policy sustainability in Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Venezuela using competing methodologies. Standard unit roots and cointegration analyses do not endorse the validity of the intertemporal budget constraint. In contrast, to varying degrees across countries, alternative testing employing a fiscal policy reaction function indicates sustainability defined as surplus adjustments in response to higher debt‐to‐income ratios. Corresponding debt‐dynamics analyses show that corrective measures were put in place to revert non‐sustainable trends in government debt. However, ancillary variables in the debt modeling produce statistically weak evidence of procyclical fiscal behavior in the Latin American countries.     

Incentives for budget discipline in the presence of elections

This paper presents a mechanism to mitigate the adverse consequences of the political budget cycle on social welfare. We use a simplified two-period version of Rogoff's [Rogoff, K., 1990. Equilibrium political budget cycles. American Economic Review 80, 21–36.] rational budget cycle model to address the normative issue of reducing the budget deficit in pre-electoral periods. A regulation consisting of a sanction scheme contingent on fiscal policy joint with a fixed transfer is shown to provide the appropriate incentives for budget discipline in the presence of elections.     

Financial markets’ behavior around episodes of large changes in the fiscal stance

Using a panel of OECD countries from 1960 to 2002, this paper shows that interest rates, particularly those of long-term government bonds, decrease when countries’ fiscal position improves and increase around periods of budget deteriorations. Stock market prices surge around times of substantial fiscal tightening and plunge in periods of very loose fiscal policy. In addition, the paper shows that results depend on countries’ initial fiscal conditions and on the type of fiscal consolidations: Fiscal adjustments that occur in country-years with high levels of government deficit, that are implemented by cutting government spending, and that generate a permanent and substantial decrease in government debt are associated with larger reductions in interest rates and increases in stock market prices.