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Incomplete U-turns on fiscal policy

Höhere Staatsausgaben gelten als neue Wunderwaffe im Kampf gegen die Krise. Zu Recht? Wohl kaum und nur temporär. Dennoch eine wichtige Diskussion:

  • “In its latest Economic Outlook, the OECD gives a thumbs-up to Donald Trumps plans (…) to enact a large fiscal stimulus and increase infrastructure spending. The organisation forecasts a chunky boost to the US growth rate, provided Trump refrains from raising trade barriers. (…) this marks a U-turn from the OECD’s previous role as a prophet of austerity.” – bto: Und damit ist die OECD ja nicht alleine, wie ein Blick auf die Kapitalmärkte zeigt.

Doch dann kommt die Kritik:

  • “Trump’s policy may offer little bang for the buck. (…) the imminent Trump tax cuts may not increase spending much, and the infrastructure plan does not actually promise public investments — just tax credits for private infrastructure building.” – bto: Das ist in der Tat ein Thema. Es ist sehr indirekt und damit zeitverzögert. Steuersenkungen dürften keinen so großen Effekt haben.
  • “The organisation’s forecasters now assume bigger ‚fiscal multipliers‘ — the effect of a fiscal stimulus on aggregate demand — than they did deep in the crisis. But surely (…) the true fiscal multipliers were bigger then than now. That’s because more resources lay idle, ripe for mobilisation by extra government spending, and because central banks were then more convinced that they had run out of monetary tools to stimulate the economy. That means they would not feel a need to tighten monetary policy in response to bigger government budget deficits — unlike the Federal Reserve now, which is aching to raise interest rates.” – bto: Ich denke nicht, dass die Notenbanken die Zinsen wirklich erhöhen wollen.
  • “(…) this amounts to a procyclical pattern of revising economic assumptions, which tends towards the destabilising policy recommendation of tightening fiscal policy in downturns and loosening it when times are good.” – bto: Es passt aber in die ökonomische Agenda. Die Regierungen werden nur noch in diese Richtung denken, gerade auch mit Blick auf die “populistische Welle”.
  • “The European Commission has taken a further, and very welcome, step on its slow march towards a more sensible interpretation of European budgetary rules. (…) Many people think this could only be achieved by making Germany spend more (…) The commission can recommend sanctions on too tight-fisted budgets from Berlin and dare it to find a qualified majority of governments to overturn.” – bto: Es ist theoretisch richtig, praktisch natürlich Blödsinn, weil es keinen Sinn macht, ein Land mit einer demografischen Perspektive wie Deutschland zu mehr Schulden zu ermuntern. Andererseits spielt es wiederum keine Rolle, weil wir unsere Ersparnisse so blöd anlegen, da wäre es in Deutschland allemal besser.
  • “Much of the focus now is on the ‚structural‘ deficit, which gives countries an easier pass on the part of the deficit that is expected to go away by itself when the economy returns to normal. But that depends on how far from normal the economy is judged to be.” – bto: Das ist das Problem bei solchen theoretischen Konzepten.
  • “Marco Fioramanti and Robert Waldmann point out two ways of doing this, and your choice between them determines how you interpret the current zero-inflation environment. On the ‚traditional Phillips curve‘ view of the relationship between inflation and unemployment, below-normal inflation combined with slow growth reflects a below-capacity economy. The implication is that demand stimulus could sustainably reduce unemployment from where it is. On the ‚accelerationist‘ view, which the researchers attribute to the commission, below-normal but stable inflation indicates that the economy was below capacity at some point, and this drove inflation down, but since inflation is not continuing to fall, the economy is now back to its sustainable rate of unemployment.” – bto: Das Letztere leuchtet ein, ist aber für die Befürworter größerer Staatsausgaben problematisch.
  • Dann zeigen sie am Beispiel Italiens das Ergebnis. Nach der Methodik der EU gibt es kein Problem in Italien: “The authors’ less restrictive method yields a slowly but evenly increasing sustainable unemployment rate, with an actual rate varying around in step with the economic cycle. But the method used by the commission makes the sustainable rate follow wherever actual unemployment goes. The “conclusion” is that the Italian economy has always been very close to full capacity — and by extension, very little of the deficit can be excused as cyclical.” – bto: ein Schluss, dem man nur zustimmen kann! Was allerdings weder für Italien noch die EU und den Euro eine gute Nachricht ist.

→ FT (Anmeldung erforderlich): “Incomplete U-turns on fiscal policy”, 30. November 2016