Optimal Public Debts, Sustainable Deficits, and Budgetary Consolidation

It is hardly surprising that government budgets have always been widely debated inboth the political and academic arenas as public finances in general, and the budgetin particular, reflect the political and ideological colour of the government whichruns the state. No less inevitable are academic debates on budgetary issues giventhat economics is a multi-paradigmatic science. This background makes all the moremysterious the current complete consensus on the need for budgetary consolidationand the overwhelming acceptance of the `balanced budget' principle in politics as wellas in academic economics. In the paper, this position is questioned by producing a simple model of optimal public debt, sustainable deficits and optimal budgetary consolidation. Different possible trajectories of fiscal restriction and expansion – based on a Post-Keynesian and Rational Expectations paradigm alternatively – are then being empirically tested by comparing the German and British historical accounts of public finances over the past three decades.     

内生经济增长理论框架下的市场失效与财政政策

内生经济增长理论认为,知识和人力资本的外部效应与创新带来的垄断势力推动经济增长的同时,也会带来非帕雷托最优的经济增长收入分配的不公平,将阻碍经济增长;加快知识和人力资本积累、促进技术进步以及缓解收入分配不公平的财政政策能纠正市场失效,使长期经济增长达到社会最优.     

Economic Growth,Public Debt and Welfare: Comparing Three Budgetary Rules

Abstract. We present an endogenous growth model with externalities of capital and elastic labor supply where we allow for public debt and welfare‐enhancing public spending. We analyze different debt policies as regards convergence to a balanced growth path and their effects on long‐run growth and welfare. Three budgetary rules are considered: the balanced budget rule, a budgetary rule where debt grows in the long run but at a rate lower than the balanced growth rate and a rule where public debt grows at the same rate as all other economic variables but where it guarantees that the intertemporal budget constraint is fulfilled.     

Economic Growth and Political Regimes

The absence of continuous regime type measures that focus on institutions rather than outcomes besets studies on whether democratic or authoritarian regimes grow faster. Additional shortcomings include the failure to consider development stages and the erroneous endogenous specification of regimes. Given panel data on 105 countries from 1960 to 1989, the effective party/constitutional framework measure does not correlate with growth or investment in the total sample. But considering development levels, some evidence indicates that discretion decreases growth in advanced areas, and, contrary to theory, inhibits investment in poorer countries. Also, single-party dictatorships have higher investment ratios but do not grow faster than party-less regimes.     

税收、财政支出与内生经济增长

构建了基于财政支出、税收的内生经济增长模型,并推导出在给定税收、财政支出政策的变化路径时,经济会达到"竞争性分散均衡",税率与经济增长存在"倒-U"型关系,政府投资性支出与经济增长之间正相关。利用中国省际面板数据进行实证检验显示,在我国经济运行中,总产出、消费、投资、政府投资性支出、税率、利息率、工资水平之间存在长期均衡关系。我国宏观税率为28.63%时达到最优值,政府投资性支出对经济增长率存在正向影响,但不同区域间存在较大差异性。     

Fiscal Policy and Long-run Growth in R&D-based Models with Endogenous Market Structure

This paper shows that in a model of endogenous growth that does not exhibit the scale effect, taxes on consumption and labor income and the level and composition of public expenditure have no effect on steady-state growth. The only fiscal instruments that affect steady-state growth are taxes on asset and corporate income. In line with standard intuition, tax rates and public expenditure have level effects on income per capita. These results emphasize that although growth is endogenous, in the sense that it is determined by the model and it is subject to policy action, instruments that work by changing market size do not affect it. Effective growth-enhancing policies operate through the interest rate.     

Growth Effects of Fiscal Policy and Debt Sustainability in the EU

In this paper we study the relationship of fiscal policy and economicperformance of some core countries in the EU. Our aim is to find outwhether public deficit and public debt have consequences for real variables in the economies we consider. The background of our empirical study is a growth model that provides us with some predictions on the relationship between fiscal policy and economic growth. In a first step we then use Granger causality tests to analyze empirically whether some of the implications of our model arecompatible with the data. In a second step, we investigate whether the fiscalpolicies of the member states have been sustainable. Given this information,we then pursue the question of whether differences in the fiscal positions ofcountries have consequences as concerns the outcome of our empirical testsof step one. Finally, we study whether the impact of the public deficit ratiodepends on the magnitude of the debt ratio.     

Endogenous growth, welfare and budgetary regimes

Within an optimizing endogenous growth model with productive public capital and government debt, we derive and characterize on the balanced growth path a set of welfare-maximizing fiscal rules under different budgetary regimes. It is shown that optimal fiscal policy depends on the specific budgetary stance considered.     

Growth,Employment and Taxation with Distortions in the Goods and Labour Market

Abstract. This paper analyses taxation in the presence of distortions in goods and labour markets in an endogenous growth model. The government disposes of capital, labour and consumption taxes. It is shown that the market solution leads to suboptimally low levels of growth and employment. However, available tax instruments are sufficient to attain the first‐best growth path in this economy. The paper further explores the relative distortion of capital and labour taxes. For plausible parametrisations of the model, lowering capital taxes dominate reductions in labour taxes in welfare terms.     

最优财政分权度与我国经济增长的关系研究

过度集权或者过度分权都不利于经济增长,因此理论上可能存在一个最优财政分权度,并与最优经济增长水平相适应.本文对我国1985年至2000年财政分权对经济增长的影响进行了非线性关系检验,结果表明我国的最优财政分权度为66.67%.同时指出,我国的财政分权并不是面临一个是否应进一步分权或集权的问题,而是应该朝着制度完备的分权方向发展,使得财政分权通过制度的规范化、科学化、透明化、公正化而发挥其积极作用.     

Does Precommitment Raise Growth? The Dynamics of Growth and Fiscal Policy

We develop an endogenous growth model driven by externalities from both private and public capital. The government levies distortionary taxation to finance a publicly provided consumption good and public infrastructure. Firms face adjustment costs. We compare the optimal and time-consistent policies in a linear-quadratic approximation of the model. Although the time-consistent equilibrium is sub-optimal in terms of ex-ante intertemporal welfare, it yields higher long-run growth and welfare, through an accumulation of assets by the state and a cut in government consumption.     

Fiscal policy in an endogenous-growth model with public investment: A note

This note extends the basic endogenous-growth model by Barro [Journal of Political Economy (1990) 98: S103–S125]. It is supposed that the government pays lump-sum transfers to the representative household or levies a lump-sum tax, besides financing public investment. Growth and welfare effects of fiscal policy are studied for the competitive economy and the growth rate of the social optimum is compared with the one of the competitive economy.     

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.     

Overaccumulation,Public Debt and the Importance of Land

In recent contributions, von Weizsäcker (2014) and Summers (2014) maintain that mature economies accumulate too much capital. They suggest large and lasting public deficits as a remedy. This study argues that overaccumulation cannot occur in an economy with land. It presents novel data of aggregate land values, analyzes the issue within a stochastic framework and conducts an empirical test of overaccumulation.     

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.     

The Nature of Capitalist Money and the Financial Links Between Debt-Led and Export-Led Growth Regimes

The aim of this article is to develop a consistent theoretical approach to the financial links between the so-called debt-led (DLG) and ‘export-led’ (XLG) growth regimes. Assuming the endogenous supply of money and the unstable dynamics of financial markets, the leveraging process of DLG regimes is taken as an inherent dynamic of developed domestic financial systems, without the need of any external capital inflow. Foreign inflows are not a requisite for such expansions; however, attracted by high expected returns, they can play a key role in fueling DLG cases. Alternatively, current-account imbalances are not an indicator of the international financial flows but rather a side effect stemming from the productive, financial and trade links between DLG and XLG countries. Based on this approach, we study the relationship between changes in credit and current-account balances in several countries before and after the crisis of 2008. Both the observed general relationship of these variables for most of the countries, as well as some specific national cases ‘out of the norm’ are fundamental for understanding the national and international financial links between DLG and XLG models.     

资本账户、法定汇率制度与事实汇率制度

文章对资本账户开放程度以及法定与事实汇率制度之差异的共同决定过程进行了研究。文章以世界各国自布雷顿森林体系崩溃以来的相关数据为基础,利用离散变量联立方程模型进行计量经济学分析。经验分析的结果表明,资本账户的开放程度,对于法定与事实汇率制度的差异有显著影响,但后者对前者的影响并不显著。此外,无论是资本账户的开放程度,还是法定与事实汇率制度的差异,都存在显著的状态依赖性。     

Endogenous overhead costs,firm size,and fiscal shocks

Recent empirical observations indicate that firm size responds to cyclical fluctuations in economic activities. By analyzing the effects of endogenous overhead costs in the economy, this paper finds that in response to a fiscal expansion, firm size will increase if the relationship between overhead costs and the number of firms is positive, while firm size will decrease if the relationship is negative.     

政府支出结构与税收分配比例的经济增长效应研究——财政分权体制下政府最大化社会福利机制推演

文章建立了一个结合两级政府、三种支出类型的内生增长模型,研究发现除了消费性支出对经济增长有负作用外,其他类型的政府支出以及财政分权(由政府间税收收入分配比例反映)对经济增长率影响的正负作用取决于支出的初始值和支出的相对生产率诸因素.最优的收入分配比例(指政府的净收入)应该与该级政府的生产性支出的相对生产率相对称,转移支付在其中所起的作用在于调整初始税收收入分配的不均带来的对这个标准的扭曲.每级政府消费性支出的比例越小越好,以维持政府能正常运转即可,而每级政府的生产性支出的比例应该与该种支出的相对生产率相对称.     

A Threshold Analysis of the Relationship Between Governance and Growth

Abstract

Quality of governance has been found to be significant in economic growth. We investigate, using a threshold technique, whether the quality of governance matters equally across all levels of economic development. We find that the quality of governance is most significant for only a subset of relatively poor countries, while education is most significant for the poorest countries, and region is most significant for the wealthiest.