How the UK government responded to the fiscal crisis: an outsider's view

This article presents an outsider's view of the UK government's response to recent financial, economic and fiscal crises. The article covers the financial crisis in 2008 when the then New Labour government rescued UK banks; the economic crisis in 2009 which resulted in economic stimulus measures; and the fiscal crisis of increasing national debts and budget deficits which led the newly-elected coalition government in 2010 to take fiscal consolidation measures. The author is an administrative scientist, and unpicks government responses, focusing on the political and administrative aspects of the governmental decision-making processes. The article ends with some lessons and foreign perspectives.     

How the Dutch government responded to financial,economic and fiscal crisis

This article describes how the Dutch government responded to that country's financial, economic and fiscal crises. The article covers the financial crisis in 2008 when the Dutch government took measures to support and save banks; the economic crisis in 2009, which forced the government to take economic recovery measures; and the resulting fiscal crisis of increasing state debts and budget deficits which led the incoming government in 2010 to begin cutbacks in public expenditure.     

Is there an alternative way to avoid another eurozone crisis to the Five Presidents' Report?

The EU Commission's Five Presidents' Report proposes new rules for the eurozone covering fiscal policy, banking and financial markets designed to avert another eurozone crisis. This paper examines the causes of the current eurozone crisis and discusses whether the Report's proposals are likely to succeed. It is argued that the main causes of the crisis were EMU and the failure of financial markets to price risk correctly. It is claimed that the Report may not solve these problems. Having already lost their monetary policy instrument, the Report's fiscal proposals would remove countries' fiscal policy instrument too and deprive countries of the means of economic stabilisation. The proposals would also transfer to an undemocratic and unaccountable Commission important national competences.     

Debt and austerity: Post-crisis lessons from Ireland

The Irish economy's heavy pre-crisis dependence on a credit-fuelled property price and construction bubble meant that it suffered more financial instability than most countries in the downturn 2008–2012 with the failure of the bulk of the banking system, heavy official and private debt and a severe employment decline. Faced with a sudden stop of international market funding, the Irish government had recourse to an EU-IMF financial support programme at the end of 2010. Reviewing the broad parameters of the programme this paper argues that, while a sharp fiscal adjustment was necessary, adverse distributional consequences were partly mitigated by government. But the programme should have embodied better international risk-sharing through financial engineering. Ireland's experience in financial crisis management and crisis resolution points to the importance of building and maintaining trust.     

希腊主权债务危机的成因与影响

日益严重的希腊主权债务危机将希腊推向了欧元区主权债务问题的风口浪尖,由此也形成了影响欧元区稳定运行的严峻挑战。该文基于国际金融危机对希腊经济与财政运行状况的影响,分析了引起希腊主权债务危机的成因及解决途径,指出解决希腊主权债务危机除了希腊自身的努力外,依然需要国际社会尤其是欧盟的援助。从全球的角度看,其他经济体的主权债务问题也同样值得警惕和重视。     

The Federal Government of Germany's circumspection concerning accrual budgeting and accounting

In 2010, the German federal government, renowned for its fiscal rectitude, abandoned its accrual-based budgeting and accounting reform, certainly the output-based budgeting component of it and possibly the rest. While the German federal ministry of finance supported the reform, parliamentarians feared that the change from an input to an output orientation to the budget, together with the reduction of the number of individual appropriations, would result in a loss of their control over the budget and the government's finances. The global banking crisis certainly increased, and may well have triggered, these fears.     

国际金融危机下的财税政策选择

我国长期面临劳动力相对过剩、储蓄资金过剩的不利局面,在国际金融危机冲击下,不仅出口需求锐减,双过剩矛盾也更加显现。这既是目前经济增长的障碍,也是经济增长的源泉。一方面,要大力实行扩张性财政政策,减税增支,推动内外需求,拉动当前经济增长;另一方面,应充分利用劳动力和储蓄资金充裕的有利条件,因势利导,大力推动产业升级、调整经济结构,通过构建经济机制、完善税制,为未来的可持续发展奠定良好基础。     

Fiscal policy in Korea: Before and after the financial crisis

This paper examines the role of fiscal policy in the Korean financial crisis and the subsequent recovery from it. We specifically address three questions: Was Korea’s fiscal policy prior to the crisis conservative, or were there large hidden contingent liabilities not captured in the official budget balance? What were the main characteristics of fiscal policy in stimulating and restructuring the economy under the IMF stabilization program in Korea? How effective were the financial guarantee and public investment programs as part of the counter-cyclical fiscal policy in the recovery process from the crisis? To address these questions, we re-estimate the consolidated budget deficits in Korea by incorporating the quasi-fiscal activities of public funds and public enterprises using their micro balance-sheet data from 1972 to 2003.     

从成本收益角度论金融危机中政府救市的必要性

本文通过构建一个成本收益理论模型来研究政府救市对经济产生的积极效应和消极效应,论证金融危机中政府是否应当救市.研究表明,金融危机中政府在进行是否救市的抉择时,应当综合考虑救市对一国的经济增长、金融机构破产损失、金融中介功能、财政成本、通货膨胀成本和道德风险等因素的影响,比较积极效应和消极效应这两者的强弱.如果经济可持续...     

Lessons from the financial crisis: failure of markets or failure of regulation?

The popular, demagogic narrative after the global financial system's collapse in 2008 has held that the financial crisis signalled the failure of capitalism. However, regulators across the world must realize that the financial crisis was not brought about by the failure of markets but by the failure of governments to appropriately regulate markets. Beginning in the 1980s, and continuing over the quarter-century that followed, regulators afforded the world of big finance an unaffordable luxury: insurance against possible failure. As a result, banks and financial institutions became adept at turning their insulation from disorderly failure, as enforced by free markets, into insulation from market discipline, as inflicted by myopic regulators. This ‘too big to fail’ syndrome combined with the incorrect belief perpetrated by the Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan that financial companies, powered by a rational motive not to lose money, could police themselves and one another. In turn, such sanguine beliefs led to considerable over-supply of financial innovation. The supply created its own demand as the financial world operated under the implicit guarantee (and market distortion) created by the ‘too big to fail’ syndrome.

The errors laid bare by the financial crisis clearly call for regulatory reform. But in designing that reform, regulators across the world should avoid the temptation to seek heavy-handed new approaches. Instead, policymakers should look to the long-term success of the system of rules whose decay brought about the crisis. Prudent regulations must seek to reinforce the fundamental principle that no one, however big or small, can be made immune to failure. Such pro-market regulation of finance is essential to preserving and fostering countries’ economic futures.     

Government accounting with Chinese characteristics and challenges

This paper explains the Chinese government's decision to adopt accrual accounting by referring to an ancient Chinese strategy of governing. It also provides a rationale for whole-of-government financial reports in China's current fiscal context. The nature of the existing government accounting system is described and the technical and implementation challenges in achieving the goals of the ambitious reform agenda are identified. The country's unique institutional structure makes it necessary to craft a system of government accounting and reporting with Chinese characteristics.     

固定汇率、经济危机与流动性陷阱——从历史视角看希腊危机

欧洲中央银行宽松的货币政策,对债务危机与金融危机交织在一起业已跌入流动性陷阱的南欧各国经济没有起到任何作用。追溯20世纪30年代的全球经济大萧条、1997年东南亚金融危机以及2002年阿根廷债务危机可以发现,僵化的汇率制度只是经济危机的导火索,失衡的财政支出和经济结构才是危机根源。当前,欧元区各国经济复苏只能在紧缩财政支出、改革经济结构和财政预算的基础上,通过货币财政政策合作解决。     

Sovereign risk premia: The link between fiscal rules and stability culture

There is a growing empirical literature studying whether permanent constraints on fiscal policy, such as fiscal rules, reduce sovereign risk premia. Nevertheless, it remains an open question whether these rules are effective genuinely or just because they mirror fiscal preferences of politicians and voters. In our analysis of European bond spreads before the financial crisis, we shed light on this issue by employing several types of stability preference related proxies. These proxies refer to a country's past stability performance, government characteristics and survey results related to general trust. We find evidence that these preference indicators affect sovereign bond spreads and dampen the measurable impact of fiscal rules. Yet, the interaction of stability preferences and rules points to a particular potential of fiscal rules to restore market confidence in countries with a historical lack of stability culture.     

Long-term performance of mergers and acquisitions in ASEAN countries

The study looks at mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in ASEAN countries and examines the post-M&A performance using data from 2001 to 2012. The industry-adjusted operating performance tends to decline in the 3 years following an M&A. Yet, the results suggest that M&As completed during the financial crisis are more profitable than those implemented before and/or after the crisis. We argue that this is mainly due to the synergies created between the firms’ resources during the crisis which augur well for firms’ economic performance. We find that, during the crisis, certain characteristics of the firms like the relative size of the target, cross-border nature of deals, acquirer's cash reserves and friendly nature of deals are important determinants of long-term post-M&A operating performance. However, for M&As during the crisis, there appears to be no relationship between performance and firms’ characteristics linked to M&A activity such as payment method, industry relatedness and percentage of target's share acquired.     

金融危机中我国经济政策选择的反思

自2008年全球金融危机以来,面对严峻的形势,世界各主要经济体纷纷采取了应对危机的政策.然而,各国在总需求下降这个一致现象的背后,明显存在着重要的差别.例如,美国的经济危机首先从金融体系开始,而中国的危机是从出口下降开始.所以我国用和世界基本完全保持一致的扩张性财政政策和货币政策来应对危机,使后来的经济发展出现了一系列的问题.论文运用宏观经济学的基本理论,对金融危机中我国采取政策进行分析,从而说明在此后经济发展过程中出现问题的原因.     

金融危机中处置有问题银行的政策选择研究

选择有效处置有问题金融机构和不良资产的政策是政策制定者在应对金融危机时的关键问题,政策选择不仅影响处理危机的财政成本,也会影响金融机构未来的风险承担行为。本文提出了一个在信息不对称条件下分析政府处置有问题银行的各种政策选择的模型,通过考察各种政策的事后道德风险和事后财政成本,对这些政策进行了比较分析,并结合美国不良资产救助计划(TARP)实施重点的转变,说明了为什么股权注资比收购不良资产更有效。     

政府清廉、财政政策与经济增长

减速治理背景下,政府官员廉洁程度与财政政策有效性之间的动态关系引起社会广泛关注。基于赋予转移概率以时变特征的MS-TVTP模型,研究发现：中国腐败治理取得阶段性成果,但并未呈现持续性改善趋势;政府廉洁状况的改善有助于财政政策有效性的提高,也有利于经济扩张区间的相对延长,最终促进经济增长,但由于中国尚处于腐败较为严重区间且改善程度有限,导致这一促进作用并不十分突出;此外,信贷政策对经济增长的促进作用已十分有限。     

Fiscal Policy,Business Cycles and Economic Stabilisation: Evidence from Industrialised and Developing Countries*

This paper empirically investigates the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles and the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations. From regressions on the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles, we find that the government's current expenditures and subsidies & transfers move counter‐cyclically, whereas taxes and capital expenditures move pro‐cyclically. Using economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries as an instrumental variable, we show that ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates understate the responsiveness of fiscal policy to economic fluctuations. We also find that fiscal policy responds asymmetrically over economic fluctuations. In investigating the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations, we mitigate omitted variable bias by adding four important factors ‐ military expenditures, oil production, economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries and fiscal policy responsiveness to business cycles. The results of effectiveness regressions are consistent with the responsiveness regressions, highlighting the importance of current expenditures, especially subsidies and transfers, in responding to business cycles and stabilising the economy.     

A balance-sheet approach to fiscal sustainability

This paper proposes an alternative methodology to assess fiscal sustainability. Our balance-sheet approach (BSA) relies on estimating separately all of a government's assets and liabilities as opposed to focusing only on the burden of explicit liabilities. In our approach, assets are primarily the present discounted value of taxes, and liabilities include explicit liabilities but also the present discounted value of expenditures. Using the value of assets and liabilities, we compute the government's balance sheet, and therefore net worth. We then evaluate the response of net worth to growth, commodity prices or real exchange rate shocks. By computing a value for the government's net worth, our methodology allows an assessment of fiscal sustainability that is less reliant on the analyst's assumptions than traditional debt sustainability analysis (DSA).