财政赤字、经常账户与政府债务研究——李嘉图等价视角的国际经验分析

本文使用42个发达工业化国家和新兴经济体国家2000～2010年的经济数据,采用面板门槛模型估计不同国家财政政策对经常账户的影响,检验李嘉图等价效应成立的条件。估计结果显示,财政政策与经常账户表现出"双赤字"现象,但政府债务规模对消费与投资的扭曲作用使得财政赤字与经常账户又呈现非线性关系。同时,较高的税负水平对财政政策效果的影响是导致李嘉图等价效应成立的重要条件。本文的结论表明,我国长期实施的扩张性财政政策对经常账户平衡的不利影响已经开始显现。因此,实施审慎的宏观财政政策、降低税负水平对维持经常账户平衡和经济健康发展具有重要的战略意义。     

SOUTH AFRICA'S TRANSITION TO A CONSOLIDATED BUDGET

The size of South Africa's fiscal stimuli, whether intended or not, has helped to avert negative consequences of the global financial downturn. With the economic cycle turning again, consolidation of deficits and a reduction of the level of debt are again the focus of policymakers. These outcomes are generally achieved by either increasing tax rates or cutting spending (discretionary fiscal policy), whereas an alternative option is to allow automatic stabilisers to consolidate budgets. This study attempts to answer whether cyclical factors or discretionary policy minimise output volatility and which one of the two presents a better policy option regarding uncertainty in real economic recovery. For this purpose, a small open‐economy gap model is built using South African data, where the budget deficit is endogenised by way of a fiscal policy “rule.” Sensitivity analyses and robustness checks are carried out using a structural vector autoregression. Given the estimates of both the automatic stabilisers as well as the components of discretionary fiscal policy, we are able to obtain impact multipliers on output and conduct scenario testing for optimal fiscal policy response towards fiscal consolidation as well as debt sustainability.     

The structural budget deficit as an instrument of fiscal policy

Summary The article describes how the structural budget deficit is or has been applied as an instrument of fiscal policy in the United States (the Full or High Employment Budget), the Netherlands (the Structural Budget Norm) and West Germany (the Cyclically Corrected Budget). The structural budget deficit is used as a guideline for fiscal policy (normative) and/or as an index in formulating a summary number to measure the cyclical influence of the budget (analytical). In the article only the first use is supported. Furthermore, it is shown that the structural deficit in the Netherlands is not only the highest one, but also shows the biggest departure from its normative value. I am indebted to J. Pen and J. Zijlstra for helpful comments and to R. Gigengack for the translation. All remaining errors are mine.     

Why Has China's Current Account Balance Converged after the Global Financial Crisis?

China's current account surplus declined significantly from its peak of nearly 10 percent of GDP in 2007 to less than 1 percent in 2018. The new pattern offered fresh evidence for our understanding of China's current account dynamics. In this paper, we used flow of funds data to gauge its underlying driving forces. Specifically, by employing index decomposition analysis, we decomposed the current account from the perspective of savings and investment into three sectors: the household, corporate, and government sectors. We found that the decline in China's current account ratio was first driven by cyclical factors, i.e. weak corporate saving growth induced by the economic slump in 2009 as well as the following massive corporate investment bolstered by the government stimulus plan. However, such cyclical factors quickly subsided, and the subsequent current account balance reduction was later supported by structural factors, i.e. household savings declined enduringly and the Chinese government switched to a more expansionary fiscal policy. There are three possible explanations for the structural movement: reduced precautionary saving due to higher social security coverage ratio, lower corporate profits as a result of economic slowdown, and a twin deficit due to the government's more relaxed fiscal stance. The new facts, however, were not consistent with other current account theories focusing on long‐term aspects of the saving–investment account puzzle, especially those relating to China's special demographic characteristics.     

Vanishing of China's Twin Surpluses and Its Policy Implications

This paper argues that the twin surpluses in China's balance of payments will disappear in the future as a result of external and internal structural changes. China's current account surplus will diminish as a result of the decline in the goods trade surplus, the expanding service trade deficit and negative investment income. China's capital account might shift from surplus to deficit as a result of shrinking net direct investment inflows and more volatile short‐term capital flows. When the twin surpluses no longer exist, the normalization of the US treasury bond yields will be sped up, terminating the one‐way appreciation of the RMB exchange rate; the People's Bank of China's pressure to sterilize inflows will be alleviated, and new problems for the People's Bank of China's monetary operation will emerge; new financial vulnerabilities for the Chinese economy will arise. Finally, the present paper provides some policy suggestions for the Chinese Government to deal with the declining twin surpluses.     

Does local governments’ budget deficit push up housing prices in China?

Budget deficit has been a common fiscal pressure facing Chinese cities since the 1994 fiscal reform. Meanwhile, land lease sales have become a significant off-budgetary revenue to local governments since 2003. This paper investigates whether financing budget deficit is an important driving force of the recent soaring housing prices when local governments function as the monopoly supplier of urban land. A conceptual framework is developed to illustrate a transmission mechanism from budget deficit to housing prices. This leads to an empirical model consisting of two simultaneous structural equations for housing prices and land prices. Using data for the 35 major Chinese cities from 2003 to 2011, an empirical exercise shows that although budget deficit has a positive effect on land prices, it is the factors from demand side, such as amenities, income and the user cost of housing capital, that have been pulling up the housing prices.     

Current Account and Fiscal Policy in Japan: 1885–1991

This paper explores the empirical relationship between the current account balance and macroeconomic series for the Japanese economy over the years 1885–1991. The long-run equilibrium depends on which series (public debt or budget deficits) affects assets relative to a capital stock rate. Departing from the Ricardian Equivalence structure (no bequest motives), fiscal policy in Japan is shown to be more related to the current account when policy is introduced by shifts in tax revenues rather than by changes in national debt.     

Anchor me: the benefits and challenges of fiscal responsibility

This paper discusses the benefits and challenges of implementing a rule‐based fiscal responsibility framework, using the Philippines as a case study. It estimates structural measures of the fiscal stance over the period 1980–2016 and applies a stochastic simulation model to determine the optimal set of fiscal rules. The empirical analysis indicates that discretionary fiscal policy has been procyclical, and the degree of procyclicality has increased in recent years. While the national government's nonbinding ceiling on the overall budget deficit is helpful, it does not constitute an appropriate operational target to guide fiscal policy over the economic cycle and necessarily ensure that the fiscal stance meets the government's intertemporal budget constraint. To this end, I use stochastic simulations and show the macroeconomic benefits of a well‐designed fiscal responsibility law that enshrines explicit fiscal rules designed for countercyclical policy and long‐term debt sustainability and an independent fiscal council that improves accountability and transparency.     

U.S. current account debate with Japan then,with China now

This paper examines two U.S. current account deficit episodes, one in the 1980s and the other in the current 2000s, in which Japan and China, respectively, are the current account surplus countries that are criticized for contributing to the deficits. In both periods, U.S. policy makers pointed out the underdeveloped and closed financial markets of the current account surplus countries and advocated for these countries to fix the deficiencies, a position akin to the current “saving glut” argument. In both episodes, the current account surplus countries have criticized the United States for its low saving, especially public saving (the “Twin Deficit” argument). This paper presents empirical findings that are consistent with the Twin Deficit hypothesis; A one percentage point increase in the budget balance raises the current account balance by 0.10–0.49 percentage point for industrialized countries. The saving glut argument seems to be applicable only for countries with highly developed legal systems and open financial markets. While the United States has been experiencing a savings drought in both episodes, the Japanese current account surplus was driven by underinvestment in the 1980s and by over-saving during the 2000s. Furthermore, although the current Chinese current account surplus is driven by its over-saving, there is no evidence of excess domestic saving in the Asian emerging market countries; rather, they seem to have suffered from depressed investment in the wake of the 1997 financial crises.     

Tax and Spend,or Spend and Tax? An Inquiry into the Turkish Budgetary Process

For resolving the budget deficit problem, some economists have advocated spending cuts, while others support either tax increases or tax cuts. This paper investigates the interrelationship between the two fiscal variables for Turkey using bivariate and multivariate cointegrating models. The Engle-Granger and Johansen tests consistently support the existence of one nonzero cointegrating vector representing a stable long-run relationship between government spending and revenues in Turkey. Furthermore, the multivariate error-correction model suggests that taxes unidirectionally Granger-cause negative changes in spending in accordance with the Buchanan-Wagner hypothesis. Thus, from the perspective of policy making and the deficit solution debate, raising taxes in Turkey is perhaps the optimal solution to the current budget deficit predicament.     

我国货币政策影响因素分析——基于VAR模型分析

论文使用2006-2012年月度数据,基于VAR模型对影响我国货币政策的因素进行了协整分析,结果表明:财政赤字、外汇储备、资产价格与M2在长期存在均衡关系,且资产价格变动对于货币供应量的影响为最大;短期内,财政赤字、外汇储备、资产价格受到一个正的冲击,引起M2变动的最大值分别为0.1702%、0.1335%、0.2478%,财政赤字、外汇储备具有正效应,资产价格具有负效应,这三者因素对于我国的货币政策的影响不容忽视,应受到政策制定者的关注。     

我国财政可持续性的实证分析：1952—2007

1998年以来,我国连续7年实施积极的财政政策。2008年,为了应对世界金融危机,我国又重启积极的财政政策。积极的财政政策在促进经济增长的同时也使得财政赤字显著增加和国债规模显著扩大,这就不可避免地引起人们对我国财政可持续性的担忧。文章根据政府跨时预算约束理论,利用协整方法对1952—2007年我国财政可持续性的状况进行实证分析。结果显示：从长期来看,1952—2007年,我国的财政是可持续的;从短期来看,1952--1978年、1979—1994年,我国的财政也是可持续的;但1995—2007年,我国的财政收支之间不存在协整关系,财政赤字政策不可持续。     

Financial crises,Asian stock indices,and current accounts: An Asian-U.S. comparative study

This paper investigates the effects of financial crises-based exchange rate, real interest rate, and personal consumption expenditure on stock market indices and balances of current account in four Asian countries/areas, and the U.S. from 1997 to 2010. Results obtained from Sims's first-order DSGE representation suggest that two policy variables – changes in the exchange rate and changes in the real interest rate lagged by one quarter – act as stabilizers for contemporaneous changes in stock indices for Thailand, Malaysia, and the U.S., but as destabilizers for Taiwan and Hong Kong. However, changes in personal consumption expenditure lagged by one quarter only play a destabilizing role in Hong Kong. For contemporaneous changes in the current account balance, all three policy variables become destabilizers for all five countries except the one-quarter lagged change in real interest rate, which acts as a stabilizer in Malaysia.     

Drivers of India’s current account deficits,with implications for ameliorating them

Since the reforms of early 1990s, India has run persistent current account deficits that reached as high as 4.8% of GDP in 2012-13. This paper examines the domestic macroeconomic and external factors that have driven India’s current account behavior during the 1997–2012 period. Using quarterly data, we apply autoregressive distributed lag and error correction techniques to estimate a model based on the intertemporal approach to the current account. We find evidence in support of the twin deficits hypothesis suggesting that reduction in the fiscal deficit could help to ameliorate the deficit in the current account. Further, we find that contrary to the Feldstein-Horioka hypothesis, domestic saving does respond to increases in domestic investment, and we support efforts to encourage saving in order to simultaneously sustain strong investment and ease the deficit in the current account.     

Influence of the public sector on activity in Denmark, 1929-39

Abstract

The article presents the first quantification of Denmark's discretionary fiscal policy of the 1930s. The measuring of the discretionary budget effects is based on a revision of the changes in the aggregate public sector budget balance and a computation of the size of the automatic stabilisers. It is shown that Danish fiscal policy became steadily more contractive between 1932/33 and 1936/37, while changes in an expansive direction occurred only in 1931/32 and in the late 1930s. It is concluded that the fiscal policy pursued in Denmark had considerably more points of similarity with fiscal policy in Great Britain than with the Swedish policy of the 1930s.     

COVID-19 policy actions and inflation targeting in South Asia

In this paper, we examine the impact of policy actions undertaken by governments during the COVID-19 pandemic on Consumer Price Index (CPI) in five major South Asian nations, namely, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Using panel fixed effects regression with robust standard errors, we show the relative importance of monetary and financial interventions on reducing CPI while fiscal interventions, direct grants and aid are insignificant. Further, delving into nature of policy interventions, our study finds evidence of negative impact of Credit Support, and Healthcare Support on CPI in South Asian nations. While our investigation is preliminary, it provides insights into additional understanding of effectiveness of policy actions on inflation targeting.     

Sub-Saharan Africa's rising public debt stock: Is there a cause for concern?

The study investigated public debt sustainability in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) by testing the reaction of the primary balance to positive and negative shocks in public debts in a panel of 45 SSA countries. The study adopts the innovative nonlinear fiscal reaction function and the dynamic panel threshold model to account for the potential asymmetric phenomenon in the public debt series. In line with extant studies, the study found that public debts in SSA are weakly sustainable and there is a highly procyclical fiscal policy bias in SSA countries, particularly in resource-rich countries, indicating that governments' fiscal policy responses are expansionary during economic upturns and contractionary during recessions, which may aggravate recessions and worsen debt situations across SSA. For robustness, the study compares the results with emerging and developed economies. The results indicate that in advanced economies, public debt is sustainable and that fiscal policy response is countercyclical. The research and policy implications are discussed.     

外贸减速背景下我国政策工具调节效力分析——基于SVAR模型的实证研究

本文运用结构向量自回归SVAR模型,对2003～2011年间我国各项政策工具在调节贸易收支方面的综合效力展开实证分析,并结合理论文献充分阐述各项政策发挥效力的传导机制,力图为中国当前政策搭配决策提供科学的理论与实证依据。本文主要结论是,在调节贸易收支失衡方面,我国货币政策比财政政策更加有效。脉冲响应函数显示,扩张性货币政策能够有效缩小贸易顺差,而且货币政策冲击在10个月后达到最大效力,2年后达到最大累积效力。财政支出扩张对贸易顺差有"先抑制再推动"的作用,但政策效力十分有限。人民币名义汇率的正向冲击能够对贸易收支造成显著的"倒J曲线效应"。与传统观点不同,国内要素价格上调在1年半左右的时间窗口不会抑制反而会扩大贸易盈余。上述实证结论支持在外贸减速背景下继续推进包括工资在内的生产要素价格改革,同时建议货币政策制定时应充分考虑对贸易收支的显著影响。     

提高我国财政透明度的一些建议——基于财政透明度的实践及其效果衡量

财政管理是善治的一个重要指标,财政透明度是财政管理的重要方面。各国推进财政透明度发展的起因不尽相同,但是要解决的问题是一致的,即降低赤字,促进财政的可持续发展,增强宏观经济的稳定性,进而促进经济发展。发达国家通过财政透明度改革取得一些良好的实践,说明财政透明度与财政政策和经济绩效的确存在一定正相关。通过对衡量财政透明度效果的分析,本文认为提高我国财政透明度应该遵循循序渐进的原则,既要积极推进同时也要全面衡量财政透明度工作的利弊,更好地为建设公共财政服务。     

The role of macroeconomic policy in rebalancing growth

The aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 has called the export-led growth model of many Asian economies into question. This paper describes the contribution that macroeconomic policy can make to promote a rebalancing of growth away from dependence on exports to developed economies to a more sustainable pattern of growth centered on domestic and regional demand. This represents a significant departure from the traditional uses of macroeconomic policy to stabilize the economic cycle and achieve stable and low inflation. The evidence suggests that macroeconomic policy can successfully contribute to growth rebalancing. Policy measures not only can affect aggregate demand directly, but can also affect it indirectly via their “microeconomic” impacts on private sector behavior such as the household savings rate. Although in the long-term fiscal policy should be balanced to maintain government debt stability and avoid crowding out of private investment, there may be substantial scope to expand monetary and fiscal policy in the medium-term to offset the deflationary effects of an appreciating currency during periods of current account reversal. Previous experience suggests that most of the needed stimulus can be provided by monetary policy, with only a supplementary role to be played by fiscal policy. Moreover, Asian economies with large current account surpluses tend to have sufficient fiscal space.