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Fiscal policy: the ideological war

By Fred Argy - posted Wednesday, 4 March 2009


Over the long term - i.e. over the business cycle as a whole - economists do not agree on whether the “structural” budget should aim for a surplus or a deficit. This is understandable as several issues arise, such as whether governments can at times be more efficient than private enterprise, whether it is sound public finance for governments not to borrow, whether higher taxes are bad for economic growth, the equity premium puzzle and so on.

But, until today, we thought we had wide agreement on whether governments should be trying to iron out cyclical differences - through fiscal stabilisers (such as automatic changes in unemployment payments or in tax revenues) or through discretionary counter-cyclical fiscal measures (such as deliberate changes in tax rates or new expenditure initiatives). We no longer have such agreement.

At the political level, Australia is now fighting two ideological wars. First, Malcolm Turnbull (leader of the Opposition) is attempting to stir up an aversion to big deficits (“the Prime Minister is plunging our nation into enormous and unprecedented debt”). Second, whatever the size of the deficit, Turnbull favours general tax cuts in preference to the Government’s policy of upfront cash grants and various other forms of spending.

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The deficit

During the Howard years, resources were booming and most households were actively building up their debt. The government did the “right” thing by running budget surpluses of 1 to 1.5 per cent of GDP. In fact, Howard did not do enough: it should have been running much bigger surpluses.

With the end of the resource boom and with households seeking to drastically reduce their debt levels, the economy was faced with the prospect of a deep recession. In those circumstances, public debt needed to rise to sustain the economic recovery. Critics of deficits worried that if governments decided to borrow it would simply be draining resources from productive uses in the private sector. They forgot that much of the private sector’s resources were idle and actively looking for alternative productive uses. Turnbull is hoping the economy will recover quickly. This is a forlorn hope. We are simply trading off short-term unemployment for fiscal prudence.

What of the risk that public debt levels will become too high? We have to make a choice between falling GDP and rising public debt. The official forecast is for public debt to rise to about 5 per cent of GDP. If the downturn lasts a few years it might even rise to about 10 per cent. This will still be a very manageable level, when compared to the much larger public debt levels in the USA, UK, Europe, and Japan. Debt levels should then start to decline in the better years.

What of the fear that rising public debt will lead us into a further increase in foreign debt, which is already very high - at around 60 per cent of GDP?
The truth is that external debt is promoted just as much by private sector borrowing as by public debt. Public debt will substitute for private debt levels, leaving total foreign debt levels broadly unchanged - and indeed the change in the mix of public-private debt could enhance overall saving if it increases the national investment-consumption mix (see later). In short, this argument does not apply to contra-cyclical interventions which are later corrected over the economic cycle (leaving a “balanced budget” over the whole of the economic cycle).

Nonetheless, New Zealand, with a current account deficit of 7 per cent of GDP - 2 per cent points higher than ours - has received a warning from Standard and Poor’s that it is “on watch for a credit downgrade”. There is a possibility this contagion could spread here to Australia. Any prospective decline in our risk premium would only be small; our history shows that we had a higher risk premium for the same external account deficit back in the 1980s and 1990s and that financial markets are becoming increasingly aware of our long record of responsible economic management and fiscal management. The alternative to public debt would be to put up with an output decline - which is a far worse outcome.

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That said, governments clearly need to encourage savings incentives in the long-run (such as offering automatic, reciprocal grants to low income people who can add additional money to their superannuation).

The choice between expenditures and general tax cuts

One group of economists - mostly libertarians like Robert Lucas, John Cochrane, Robert Barro and John Taylor - argue that the government should go for tax cuts. Malcolm Turnbull - in many ways a social progressive on issues like abortion, gay rights, the republic etc. - has now lined up with the economic libertarians. Not only has he disowned the 10.4 billion package (even though he heartily commended it back in October), but he also rejects the $42 billion package.

On the other hand, egalitarian economists like Paul Samuelson, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Solow and Paul Krugman want to use all relevant fiscal measures to minimise investment risk, ensure steadier income and avoid an increase in “core” unemployment - the unemployment rate consistent with non-accelerating inflation. This is also the view of some conservatives such as Martin Feldstein.

I find myself in the latter camp. Our argument is that:

  • supply side models are adequate models of the long run but they do not explain demand-side short-term economic fluctuations very well. Libertarian economic analysis is largely based on longer term models (e.g. 1955-2006 in the case of Makiw and earlier still by Barro), which allow for supply-side responses. This analysis does not apply to near-depressions. On the other hand, models which include wage and price rigidities, such as New Keynesian models, do have a greater ability to explain short-term fluctuations in a severe recession and can best address these macro-economic fluctuations; and
  • Turnbull’s strategy (to bring forward the earlier tax cuts of June 2009 and June 2010) will, as Peter Martin argues, do nothing to alter anyone’s view of their permanent income. Even if tax cuts could be converted to make them seem permanent, there is nothing to stop governments from choosing to hike tax receipts at a later date when the depression is over.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is now urging its members to devise packages that “provide maximum fiscal boost to demand very soon”.

What is needed are timely, well targeted, easily reversible spending measures - such as bricks and mortar investments in “shovel ready” (no long lead times) infrastructure; temporary tax benefits for (genuinely) low-income persons to limit demands for wage increases; through the states, assistance for all specific industries or regions that will bear the brunt of job losses; and temporary tax benefits to encourage private sector investments and technology (such as reducing energy or water consumption).

The latest fiscal package does meet the “timely” criterion - they will have their greatest impact when the economy is most vulnerable. And they should prove temporary (with no permanent subtractions from revenues or expenditures beyond the first year or so). But, as Saul Eslake pointed out, they do not stack up well against the targeted criterion e.g. cash grants are not tightly targeted and it is not clear why every school in the country needs the opportunity to upgrade or acquire halls, laboratories, and libraries. The package could have been better targeted at investment, but the challenge was to ensure the measures were easy to reverse.

While there is no conclusive evidence of what happened after the Government introduced its first fiscal package, it has certainly impacted on retail sales, boosted housing sales, and led to a surprise jump in the number of women employed full time, suggesting that such packages can work.

All things considered, will the present $42b fiscal package meet all the necessary criteria? It can, in theory, “crowd out” private investment and net imports - but only if:

  • there is pressure on productive resources;
  • direct interest rate responses are likely to be very large, despite an accommodating monetary policy;
  • exchange rate movements are correspondingly large; and
  • there is significant forward looking consumption smoothing by private agents (Ricardian equivalence effects where people are smart enough to recognise that higher deficit spending will lead to higher taxes later).

The first only applies when the economy is operating close to full employment. The second and third are crucial. The effectiveness of fiscal policy is only seriously damaged where (a) the smallest rise in investment and housing demand sharply pushes up rates of interest or (b) if the demand for real money is very insensitive to interest rate changes. But such extreme circumstances - and their effects on exchange rate movements, especially if other countries are doing the same thing - are unrealistic and unsupported by the evidence. As for Ricardian effects, past experience suggests that any effects tend to be long term and then only dampen less than half the initial impact.

So we can  reasonably argue that the fiscal package ought to work. A strong argument for such a package can be found in Economist’s View of February 15, although it does note the important distinction between borrowing domestically and borrowing from abroad.

Conclusions

In my opinion, Turnbull is wrong on both counts when it comes to his aversion to a big deficit and his preference for permanent income. But, for the first time, we have a political situation where libertarian and egalitarian economists are free to engage in a joust on big Keynesian ideas - small government versus big government.

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About the Author

Fred Argy, a former high level policy adviser to several Federal governments, has written extensively on the interaction between social and economic issues. His three most recent papers are Equality of Opportunity in Australia (Australia Institute Discussion Paper no. 85, 2006); Employment Policy and Values (Public Policy volume 1, no. 2, 2006); and Distribution Effects of Labour Deregulation (AGENDA, volume 14, no. 2, 2007). He is currently a Visiting Fellow, ANU.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Fred Argy

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