Category Archives: budget

McKinnon’s Claim that RMB-$ Appreciation Would Not Reduce Trade Imbalances

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The International Economy magazine (Winter 2013) asks 16 authorities, “Can Changes in Exchange Rate Valuations Affect Trade Imbalances?”   It is referring to the claim in a recent book by Stanford economist Ron McKinnon that pressure on China to let the renminbi appreciate against the dollar is fundamentally misconceived because such a movement in the exchange rate would not reduce China’s trade surplus nor American’s trade deficit.  This is part of an old debate that pre-dates the rise of the China trade problem.  Ron has long claimed that exchange rates don’t determine trade balances because they are “instead” determined by national saving versus investment.   I thought Paul Krugman demolished the argument pretty effectively 25 years ago, with a textbook graph of internal balance versus external balance.   But evidently many still fall for the argument (including some of the experts in the TIE symposium).   So I try again: read more

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Can the Euro’s Fiscal Compact Cut Deficit Bias?

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     Europe’s fiscal compact went into effect January 1, as a result of its ratification December 21 by the 12th country, Finland, a year after German Chancellor Angela Merkel prodded eurozone leaders into agreement.   The compact (technically called the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union) requires  member countries to introduce laws limiting their structural government budget deficits to less than ½ % of GDP.  A limit on the “structural deficit” means that a country can run a deficit above the limit to the extent — and only to the extent — that the gap is cyclical, i.e., that its economy is operating below potential due to temporary negative shocks.   In other words, the target is cyclically adjusted.  The budget balance rule must be adopted in each country, preferably in their national constitutions, by the end of 2013. read more

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Monetary Alchemy, Fiscal Science

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          The year 2013 marks the 100th anniversaries of two separate major institutional innovations in American economic policy:  the Constitutional Amendment enacting the federal income tax, ratified on February 3, 1913, and the law establishing the Federal Reserve, passed in December 1913.  
           It took some time before the two new institutions became associated with the explicit concepts of fiscal policy and monetary policy, respectively.   It wasn’t until after the experience of the 1930s that they came to be viewed as potential instruments for managing the macro-economy.  John Maynard Keynes, of course, pointed out the advantages of expansionary fiscal policy in circumstances like the Great Depression.   Milton Friedman blamed the Depression on the Fed for allowing the money supply to fall.    [Tools of fiscal policy used by governments, in addition to tax rates and tax deductions, are spending and transfers.  Tools of monetary policy used by central banks include interest rates, quantities of money and credit, and instruments such as reserve requirements and foreign exchange intervention used in various (non-US) countries.] read more

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