ARE THE TWIN DEFICITS REALLY RELATED?

The emergence of record current-account and fiscal deficits in the United States during the 1980s draws increasing attention to what has become known as the "twin deficit" problem. Conventional wisdom is that a shift to larger government deficits entails a decline in government saving and results in larger trade deficits, Persistently large trade deficits are troublesome because they imply a transfer of wealth to foreigners and possibly a reduction in future generations' living standards.
This paper examines whether post-World War II data for the United States reveal a long-run secular relationship between the trade deficit and the fiscal deficit. The focus is on the secular relationship since that is the one most relevant to long-run policy concerns. The authors employ three different statistical techniques: (i) a deterministic technique for separating the secular components from the cyclical components to derive secular measures of the twin deficits, (ii) a stochastic procedure to isolate the secular components, (Hi) cointegration analysis to test for a long-run equilibrium relationship.
The authors conclude that, based on the first two approaches, evidence of a positive secular relationship between the twin deficits exists only under flexible exchange rates. This relationship appears quite strong–that is, a $1 change in the fiscal deficit eventually leads to roughly a $1 change in the trade deficit. On the other hand, findings based on cointegration analysis indicate no long-run equilibrium relationship between the twin deficits. This latter finding, however, may reflect a low power of the relevant statistical tests stemming from the shortness of the sample period.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BUDGET DEFICITS

In Leachman et al. (2005) we use the multicointegration approach to test for sustainable fiscal budgeting processes in a stochastic setting in 15 industrialized countries. In this paper, we extend the analysis in order to rank these same countries as well as an additional three, according to the degree to which their budget processes are sustainable. Rankings are related to theories regarding the political economy of budget deficits. Evidence clearly indicates that fiscal performance is better where fiscal budgeting institutions are strong. Additionally, we find that in conjunction with fiscal strength, greater degrees of federalism positively affect intertemporal budget management.     

THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT DEFICITS ON PERSONAL AND NATIONAL SAVING RATES

This study provides fresh evidence on the responsiveness of private consumption and, by implication, saving to government deficits. It focuses on consumption and saving from 1981 to 1989, a period during which the personal saving rate was characterized as surprisingly unresponsive to high federal budget deficits. The authors attempt to determine whether this experience is consistent with previous behavior. They also test whether this experience refutes the Ricardian Equivalence Proposition (REP), under which consumers incorporate the government's intertemporal budget constraint into their own.
The analysis involves estimating two consumer expenditure functions based on two measures of current income capable not only of explaining expenditure behavior during the postwar period but also of successfully forecasting out of sample into the 1981–1989 period. Only one model is consistent with the REP, but neither model indicates that high government deficits caused the drop in the national saving rate experienced during the 1980s. Both models predict similar short-run responses to shifts in the government deficit. The responses depend crucially on the mix of tax and expenditure changes used to achieve the deficit shift. Both consumption and saving are more responsive to changes in government expenditures on goods and services than they are to changes in taxes.     

THE BEHAVIOR OF U.S. PUBLIC DEBT AND DEFICITS DURING THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

In this paper we test the sustainability of U.S. public debt for the period 1916–2012 by analyzing how the primary surplus to gross domestic product (GDP) responds to changes in the debt to GDP ratio in a time‐varying parameter model. Further, we determine the stationarity property of the debt/GDP ratio while accommodating possible breaks in the data caused by wars and economic crisis under both the null and alternative hypotheses of an endogenous unit root test. The results show that the U.S. public debt was sustainable until 2005 when the primary surplus to GDP reacted negatively to the debt/income ratio. This is further exacerbated during the global financial crisis when primary surpluses continued to fall with increased debt, thus jeopardizing the sustainability of fiscal policy. While the stationarity test shows that the U.S. fiscal debt/GDP ratio is sustainable, it fails to highlight the risk that its debt policy has been becoming unsustainable in recent years. (JEL H62, E62, C2)     

BUDGET DEFICITS, DOMESTIC INVESTMENT, AND TRADE DEFICITS

This paper summarizes recent empirical studies on the effects of budget deficits on interest rates, investment, and trade deficits in the United States. It also reports new evidence on the effects of budget deficits on investment and on trade deficits for the 1980s. The results support the view that budget deficits crowd out domestic investment and increase trade deficits.     

THE TEMPORAL CAUSALITY BETWEEN FISCAL DEFICITS AND INTEREST RATES

Conventional wisdom suggests that higher government fiscal deficits cause higher (long-term) interest rates. Much empirical work—generally standard ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis—has examined this issue and has produced mixed findings. Even if these standard OLS studies conclude that deficits and interest rates are related, they do not answer the question of which came first—the higher deficit or the higher interest rate? A few studies have used Granger causality to consider the question of temporal causality, generally with short-term interest rates. Tliis paper employs the relatively new cointegration and error-correction methodology to reexamine the temporal causality between fiscal deficits and interest rates—both long term and short term. This study finds evidence that federal deficits cause the long-term interest rate.     

深入推进西部开发的战略思路研究

国家实施西部大开发战略以来,西部地区的经济、社会、基础设施、生态建设等各项事业取得快速发展。但是,西部地区的经济发展水平、居民收入水平与全国平均相比差距仍较大,公共服务领域不足等问题依然突出。文章在分析深入推进西部开发的宏观背景和评价西部开发战略实施成效的基础上,提出深入推进西部开发所需要的战略转型:从之前的"打基础"阶段逐渐转向"巩固基础"和以"富民"为核心持续促进经济发展的阶段;从之前实施的总体性政策转向更加明晰的差异化区域政策,实施"抓两头、带中间"的开发策略。同时,划分出三种政策类型区,即重点经济区、重点扶持区和重点生态功能区,以便在空间上有针对性的提出差异化的区域政策。     

GOVERNMENT DEFICITS IN POST-KEYNESIAN THEORIES OF GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION

This paper examines the role of the government sector in post-Keynesiantheories of growth and distribution. It shows the possibilityof reconciling two views on income distribution, present inthe post-Keynesian tradition, which the literature has consideredalternative. By following Kaldor's suggestions on the role thatmonetary and fiscal policy can play in maintaining steady growthconditions, we find that distributive variables depend bothon the rate of growth of the economy, as pointed out by Kaldorand Pasinetti, and on the money rate of interest, as suggestedby Sraffa and by the subsequent elaborations of a monetary theoryof distribution. The paper first verifies the validity of thePasinetti theorem and the dual theorem, and shows that thesetheorems do not always hold when the government sector is explicitlyconsidered. It extends the analysis to the case of the corporateeconomy and institutional distribution, clarifying limits tothe neo-Pasinetti theorem related to the assumption of an endogenousvaluation ratio in steady-growth equilibrium and to the factthat this theorem does not hold when real capital investmentis also financed through the issue of firms' bonds.     

基于多元逐步回归与通径分析的临澧县建设用地驱动力研究

随着城镇化进程的加快,非农建设占用土地特别是耕地日益突出,为了更好地保护有限的耕地资源,文章以临澧县为研究对象,采用多元回归分析法与通径分析相结合的研究方法,对促使地区建设用地增加驱动力进行了研究。文章通过运用SPSS统计软件,选取对影响临澧县建设用地的9个因素进行逐步回归分析,然后根据回归模型进行通径分析,确定了影响临澧县各类建设用地增长的主要驱动力,为科学地制定土地利用规划、更好地保护耕地资源提供科学依据。     

基于信息的双重危机模型及其在东亚危机中的应用

由于近来在新兴市场国家发生的一系列货币危机都同时伴随着银行危机的发生,要全面地理解这些货币危机,我们需要将具有微观基础的银行部门明确地纳入到货币危机的分析模型中去.该文通过应用基于信息的银行挤兑模型,建立了一个双重危机模型,并对诸如经济基本面的脆弱如何导致双重危机,以及银行危机和货币危机如何相互作用等问题,做出了内生化的解释.模型抓住了最近新兴市场货币危机的本质特征,并与最近东亚危机的经验事实非常符合.