An international analysis of the economic cost for countries located in crisis zones

We study the impact on a country’s economy of sharing a direct land border with a country experiencing conflict. Through analyzing sixty-three major episodes of regional instability during the period between 1990 and 2016 by using panel data methods applied to unrestricted error correction model, the opportunity cost of such regional conflict is examined. The resulting estimates of GDP loss are most profound for countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Regional turmoil resulting from conflict has been found to have significantly reduced GDP growth in Angola, China, Kuwait, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Tanzania, with estimates ranging from over 3% to 7% average reductions in GDP growth rate using both pooled OLS and fixed effects estimations (with an international average of 0.95% and 1.18% respectively). This considerable opportunity costs of military expenditure raise an important and challenging question to the concerned governments about the economic and social rightfulness of this expenditure and whether their people ultimately pay the price for the government decisions of increasing military spending.     

Fiscal Stimulus in Times of High Debt: Reconsidering Multipliers and Twin Deficits

We investigate the impact of fiscal stimuli at different levels of the government debt‐to‐GDP ratio for a sample of 17 European countries from 1970 to 2010. This is implemented in an interacted panel VAR framework in which all coefficient parameters are allowed to change continuously with the debt‐to‐GDP ratio. We find that responses to government spending shocks exhibit strong nonlinear behavior. While the overall cumulative effect of a spending shock on real GDP is positive and significant at moderate debt‐to‐GDP ratios, this effect turns negative as the ratio increases. The total cumulative effect on the trade balance as a share of GDP is negative at first but switches sign at higher levels of debt. Consequently, depending on the degree of public indebtedness, our results accommodate long‐run fiscal multipliers that are greater and smaller than one or even negative as well as twin deficit and twin divergence behavior within one sample and time period. From a policy perspective, these results lend additional support to increased prudence at high public debt ratios because the effectiveness of fiscal stimuli to boost economic activity or resolve external imbalances may not be guaranteed.     

Long‐Term Effects of Fiscal Policy on the Size and Distribution of the Pie in the UK*

This paper provides a joint analysis of the output and distributional long‐term effects of various fiscal policies in the UK, using a vector autoregression (VAR) approach. Our findings suggest that the long‐term impact on GDP of increasing public spending and taxes is negative, and especially strong in the case of current expenditure. We also find significant distributional effects associated with fiscal policies, indicating that an increase in public spending reduces inequality while a rise in indirect taxes increases income inequality.     

Fiscal Decentralisation and Local Economic Growth: Evidence from a Fiscal Reform in China

This paper uses a fiscal decentralisation reform in China – namely, the province‐managing‐county (PMC) reform – to examine the effects of fiscal decentralisation on local economic growth. The PMC reform abolished the subordinate fiscal relationship between prefectures and counties and transferred much of the tax and spending authority from the prefecture to the county level. Exploiting a county‐level panel data set over 2001–11, we find that the reform has led to a significant increase in the GDP growth rate. The effect is considerably more pronounced in regions with superior initial institutional quality. We also identify channels: the PMC reform induced county governments to exert lower tax burdens on firms and increase spending on infrastructure construction.     

Unemployment fiscal multipliers

We estimate the effects of fiscal policy on the labor market in US data. An increase in government spending of 1 percent of GDP generates output and unemployment multipliers, respectively, of about 1.2 percent (at one year) and 0.6 percentage points (at the peak). Each percentage point increase in GDP produces an increase in employment of about 1.3 million jobs. Total hours, employment and the job finding probability all rise, whereas the separation rate falls. A standard neoclassical model augmented with search and matching frictions in the labor market largely fails in reproducing the size of the output multiplier whereas it can produce a realistic unemployment multiplier but only under a special parameterization. Extending the model to strengthen the complementarity in preferences, to include unemployment benefits, real wage rigidity and/or debt financing with distortionary taxation only worsens the picture. New Keynesian features only marginally magnify the size of the multipliers. When complementarity is coupled with price stickiness, however, the magnification effect can be large.     

Canada's Budget Triumph

In the mid‐1990s Canada's federal government, concerned about a debt‐to‐GDP ratio that was approaching 70%, began a decade‐long policy of cutting government spending. It also increased taxes, but by only one dollar for about every six dollars of spending cuts. The Canadian government cut subsidies to individuals, corporations, and provincial governments while tightening eligibility for unemployment insurance. The government also sold off its holdings of various state‐owned enterprises. One major success was its shifting of air traffic control to NAV Canada, a private, non‐profit user cooperative. This step netted the government $1.4 billion at the outset, saved about $200 million a year in subsidies, and resulted in a technological revolution in air traffic control that has put Canada years ahead of the United States. From 1997 to 2008, Canada's government had an unbroken string of annual budget surpluses; and by 2009, Canada's debt‐to‐GDP ratio had fallen below 30%. Starting in 2000, the government used some of what otherwise would have been surplus to cut taxes on individuals and corporations. The corporate tax rate was cut in stages from 28% in 2000 to 21% by 2004.     

Fiscal Policy Shocks in the Euro Area and the US: An Empirical Assessment*

We analyse the impact of fiscal policy shocks in the euro area as a whole, using a newly‐available quarterly data set of fiscal variables for the period 1981–2007. To allow for comparability with previous results on euro‐area countries and the US, we use a standard structural vector autoregressive (VAR) framework, and study the impact of aggregated and disaggregated government spending and net‐tax shocks. In addition, to frame euro‐area results, we apply the same methodology for the same sample period to US data. We also explore the sensitivity of the results to the inclusion of variables aiming to control for underlying financial and fiscal conditions. The main new findings are that: expansionary fiscal shocks have a short‐term positive impact on GDP and private consumption, with government spending shocks entailing, in general, higher effects on economic activity than (net) tax reductions; output multipliers to government expenditure shocks are of similar size in the euro area and in the US; the persistence of a fiscal spending shock is higher in the US than in the euro area, which appears to be related to military spending in the US; and fiscal multipliers have increased over the recent past in both geographical areas.     

Trends in British public investment

British public investment has declined sharply both as a share of GDP and as a share of government spending since the 1970s. Only part of this decline is explained by privatisation, which transferred some public investment to the private sector. More important was the very large and permanent reduction in public house‐building between the mid‐1970s and the early 1980s. Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the rate of public investment recovered somewhat, but after that time it declined again, reaching a record low in 1999. The most recent decline in public investment has affected a range of central government programmes, and it has not been significantly offset by investment under the Private Finance Initiative. The government now plans to increase investment spending, although levels look set to remain low by historical standards for some time to come.     

Accuracy of Long-Range Actuarial Projections of Health Care Costs

The Office of the Actuary, mandated to provide projections of future medical spending for use by the U.S. Medicare and Medicaid programs, publishes forecasts that have been widely used by private firms and government budget officials as a baseline for expected long-run premium trends and to estimate liabilities for retiree health benefits. Although these projections have been made publicly available since 1986, they have not yet been subject to systematic evaluation by an external reviewer. This article develops a method for assessment of both short- and long-run accuracy and applies it to the 17 sets of projections made public over the last 25 years. The more recent set of projections (1998–2010) incorporating lagged macroeconomic effects appear to be more accurate than the older (1986–1995) projections that relied more heavily on demographic cost of illness trends. The average annualized error of the forecasts is approximately 0.5–1% per year, whether assessed over a span of one, two, or 10 years. Projecting “excess” growth in health spending (the rise in the share of wages or GDP) tends to be more accurate than forecasting nominal or real spending per capita.     

Fiscal policy and aggregate demand in the USA before,during, and following the Great Recession

We examine the direct effect of federal and subnational fiscal policy on aggregate demand in the USA by introducing the Fiscal Effect (FE) measure. FE can be decomposed into three components. Discretionary FE quantifies the effect of discretionary or legislated policy changes on aggregate demand. Cyclical FE captures the effect of the automatic stabilizers—changes in government taxes and spending arising from the business cycle. Residual FE measures the effect of all changes in government revenues and outlays which cannot be categorized as either discretionary or cyclical; for example, it captures the effect of the secular increase in entitlement program spending due to the aging of the population. Unlike other approaches, FE is a bottom-up approach that allows for differential effects on aggregate demand depending on the type and length of the policy change. Thus, FE is arguably the most detailed and comprehensive measure available of the stance of US fiscal policy in relation to aggregate demand. We use our new metric to examine the contribution of fiscal policy to growth in real GDP over the course of the Great Recession and current expansion. We compare this contribution to the contributions to growth in aggregate demand made by fiscal policy over past business cycles. In doing so, we highlight that the relatively strong support of government policy to GDP growth during the Great Recession was followed by a historically weak contribution over the course of the current expansion.     

Supporting Communities in Transition: The Impact of the Armenian Social Investment Fund

The Armenian Social Investment Fund supports communities' effortsto improve local infrastructure during Armenia's economic transitionaway from central planning, financing community-designed and-implemented projects to rehabilitate primary schools, watersystems, and other infrastructure. This article considers thetargeting, household impact, and community effects of the socialfund's activities. It relies on a nationally representativehousehold survey, oversampled in areas where the social fundwas active. Using propensity and pipeline matching techniquesto control for community self-selection into the social fund,it evaluates the household effects of rehabilitating schoolsand water systems. The results show that the social fund reachedpoor households, particularly in rural areas. Education projectsincreased households' spending on education significantly andhad mild effects on school attendance. Potable water projectsincreased household access to water and had mild positive effectson health. Communities that completed a social fund projectwere less likely than the comparison group to complete otherlocal infrastructure projects, suggesting that social capitalwas expended in these early projects. By contrast, communitiesthat joined the social fund later and had not yet completedtheir projects took more initiatives not supported by the socialfund.     

The effect of VATs on government balance sheets

The value-added tax, VAT, has become a popular means of raising funds for governments around the world. Countries seeking to reduce variation in tax revenues as well as raise revenue to solve deficits often consider a VAT, and the IMF in particular has become an advocate for the tax for countries seeking tax reform. For all its popularity, its ability to deliver on these promises remains understudied. Countries with a lower cost of raising funds may instead choose to spend more instead of paying down their debts. This paper uses matching techniques to estimate the impact of a VAT on government debts and deficits. The tax is associated with falls in central government debt and deficits as well as expenditures as a share of GDP. There is limited evidence of increases in tax revenue and increases in stability of government spending. The choice of VAT rate is positively correlated with deficit reduction, and the effects of the tax are heterogeneous with respect to the probability of adoption of the treatment and what taxes it is replacing.     

Immigration and local spending in social services: evidence from a massive immigration wave

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between immigration and redistributive public spending by using the recent, massive arrival of immigrants in Spain. Specifically, we focus our analysis on the effect of 1998–2006 changes in local immigrant density on contemporaneous changes in municipal spending in social services. To address the potential endogenous location of immigrants, we adopt an instrumental variables approach that uses the distribution of rental housing in 1991 to predict the location of immigrant inflows. The results indicate that (per capita) social spending increased less in those municipalities that recorded the largest increases in immigrant density. We interpret our results as a reduction in natives’ demand for redistributive public spending.     

技术进步与医疗卫生费用的增长

医疗费用的快速上涨是各国面临的共同问题与挑战。而医疗技术的进步是推动费用上涨最主要的动力。对技术推动型费用增长的评价要借助成本效益的分析。各国在制定费用控制政策时,不可避免地将面临技术进步与费用控制的两难选择。     

Financial Crisis, Fiscal Policy, and the 1995 GDP Contraction in Mexico

In 1995 Mexico experienced its largest contraction of gross domestic product (GDP) since the early twentieth century. I propose a simple mechanism to partially account for the contraction: the effects of changes in fiscal policy. The contraction of GDP was preceded by a financial crisis. The government responded by raising taxes and reducing spending. Using a model with taxation and government consumption, and the business cycle accounting methodology, I measure the impact of fiscal policy. Fiscal policy accounts for 20.7% of the fall in output.     

From welfare state to entitlement programmes

This paper reviews the record on the development of the welfare state. The Beveridge model though world famous had few imitators and insurance based models were more common. The irony of development was that the United States which had the greatest resistance now has the most severe problem with rising spending. From 1990 onwards there was a phase of reform with three there key variables in play, concern about competitiveness (Germany), the power of recipients of entitlement programmes (US) and concerns about work incentives (UK). The recession has made the problem of containing welfare spending more urgent but the political resistance has increased. The welfare state, the consensus programme for social solidarity of the twentieth century was set to be he focus for political conflict and social division in the 21st century.     

事业单位改革和财政政策选择

虽然政府在发展社会事业上负有不可推卸的责任,但公共服务的多层次性和群众需求的多样化特征使得政府无力也不可能成为唯一的公共服务供给者.因此,在事业单位改革的基本思路上,一是要坚持多元化的改革取向,让能走向市场的事业单位进入市场,政府集中财力保障基础性社会事业的发展.二是要动员社会力量举办社会事业,以满足不同层次的公共服务需求.三是要正确看待当前社会事业领域中非营利性组织的地位作用,并健全相应的管理制度.为了取得理想的改革效果,财政必须要从改进拨款方式、加强绩效考评入手,加强对社会事业支出的管理.同时还应完善相关优惠政策,调动民间资本进入社会事业领域的积极性.     

Signals from the government: Policy disagreement and the transmission of fiscal shocks

We investigate the effects of fiscal policy communication on the propagation of government spending shocks. To this aim, we propose a new index measuring the coordination effects of policy communication on private agents׳ expectations. This index is based on the disagreement amongst US professional forecasters about future government spending. The underlying intuition is that a clear fiscal policy communication can coalesce expectations, reducing disagreement. Results indicate that, in times of low disagreement, the output response to fiscal spending innovations is positive and large, mainly due to private investment response. Conversely, periods of elevated disagreement are characterised by muted output response.     

Social security in the UK under New Labour: what did the Third Way mean for welfare reform?

In 1997, the Labour Party was elected in the UK with few explicitly articulated ideas about social security reforms. This paper reviews the large number of subsequent reforms to social security, and argues that some consistent themes have emerged. A commitment to keep to the tight spending plans of the previous, Conservative, administration left little scope for increases in benefit spending during the first two years in office. Since that time, increases in the generosity of some social security programmes have been directed towards achieving certain goals. An emphasis on encouraging paid work has been a consistent theme, whilst aims of reducing poverty rates for children and pensioners have been emphasised since 1999. Spending to achieve these goals has often been directed through means‐tested programmes, and there has been a related weakening of the link between paid National Insurance contributions and benefit entitlements. It remains to be seen whether reforms to the process of income assessment will increase take‐up.     

Transfer problem dynamics: Macroeconomics of the Franco-Prussian war indemnity

We study the classic transfer problem using the largest historical example, the Franco-Prussian War indemnity of 1871-1873 which saw France transfer to Germany 25% of a year's GDP. A dynamic, two-country model allows for debt finance, supply-side effects, and controls for wartime spending. The model can fit the historical paths of French net exports and the terms of trade. But explaining French output and consumption requires additional shocks. These results illustrate the usefulness of the DSGE approach to the transfer problem and provide striking evidence of the importance of international capital markets in the 19th century.