The Effect of Deficits The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy U.S. Treasury Department For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402 -2- TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: GOVERNMENT DEFICIT SPENDING AND ITS EFFECTS ON PRICES OF FINANCIAL ASSETS BACKGROUND AND COVERAGE....................................... 1 SOME ASSERTIONS ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF DEFICITS ON THE ECONOMY...3 Short-term financial effects................................ 4 Effects of deficits on cyclical recovery.................... 5 EFFECTS OF DEFICITS ON INTEREST RATES......................... 7 Deficits and interest rates in a simple Keynesian framework..7 The role of bonds........................................... 8 Some modifications of the Keynesian framework............... 9 The treatment of wealth.................................... 10 Comments on empirical evidence............................. 12 DEFICITS AND EXCHANGE RATES.................................. 13 DEFICITS, INFLATION AND THE MIX OF OUTPUTS................... 15 A digression on crowding out............................... 17 INCENTIVE EFFECTS............................................ 18 POTENTIAL GROWTH AND THE STRUCTURAL DEFICIT.................. 19 A SHORT NOTE ON THE LONG RUN................................. 21 CONCLUSIONS.................................................. 23 PART II: THE EFFECT OF FEDERAL DEFICITS ON INTEREST RATES: A SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE INTRODUCTION................................................. 28 SOME RECENT SURVEYS OF THE DEBATE............................ 28 MEASURING THE REAL DEFICIT AND DEBT.......................... 30 MEASURING THE REAL INTEREST RATE............................. 33 ECONOMETRIC TESTS OF THE EFFECT OF DEFICITS ON INTEREST RATES. 36 THEORETICAL RESULTS FROM BASIC KEYNESIAN ANALYSIS............ 42 THE KEYNESIAN INVESTMENT AND CONSUMPTION FUNCTIONS........... 43 TABLE OF CONTENTS (Cont.) THE EFFECT OF WEALTH IN DEFICIT/INTEREST RATE ANALYSIS...... 43 DEMAND FOR MONEY IN KEYNESIAN MODELS........................ 44 QUANTITY THEORY CRITICISM OF KEYNESIAN MODELS............... 45 LOANABLE FUNDS ANALYSIS..................................... 46 CROWDING-OUT................................................ 46 IMPLICATIONS OF GROWTH IN THE FEDERAL DEBT.................. 48 POTENTIAL INSTABILITY....................................... 49 MONETIZATION OF THE DEFICIT................................. 50 EFFECT OF WAGE-PRICE BEHAVIOR IN DEFICIT/INTEREST RATE ANALYSIS.............................................. 52 RELATIVE PRICE EFFECTS OF TAXES IN DEFICIT/INTEREST RATE ANALYSIS............................................. 52 RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS....................................... 52 CONCLUSION.................................................. 53 REFERENCES.................................................. 54 PART III: INTEREST RATES AND THE FEDERAL DEFICIT: SOME EMPIRICAL TESTS INTRODUCTION................................................ 63 EXTENDING THE FELDSTEIN-ECKSTEIN ANALYSIS................... 63 RESPECIFICATION OF THE DEFICIT/INTEREST RATE MODEL.......... 69 EMPIRICAL RESULTS........................................... 74 CONCLUSIONS................................................. 82 REFERENCES.................................................. 83 PART I GOVERNMENT DEFICIT SPENDING AND ITS EFFECTS ON PRICES OF FINANCIAL ASSETS PART I GOVERNMENT DEFICIT SPENDING AND ITS EFFECTS ON PRICES OF FINANCIAL ASSETS BACKGROUND AND COVERAGE The current international concern among policymakers with present and projected levels of budget deficits is of relatively recent origin. Following the first oil crisis there was a general increase in budget deficits, but no great anxiety about their economic effects was evident initially. However, in 1975, as the industrial economies were emerging from the world-wide slump, the term "crowding out" gained popularity in the financial press. The celebrity of this term was a gauge of heightened public uneasiness about the ill effects that growing budget deficits might have on economic performance. In response to these concerns, beginning about 1976, budget policy was directed toward bringing government deficits relative to GNP down to pre-1973 levels. Success has been only partial. Restrictive fiscal policies in 1976-77 resulted in a reduction of budget deficits within the OECD area by about 1 percent of GNP. But, in 1978, the sluggish recovery of the world economy prompted the adoption of a program of coordinated fiscal action among OECD countries and the Bonn Summit agreement on more expansionary policies (the "locomotive" initiative). Further modest increases in deficits began in that year, so that on the eve of the second oil shock in late 1978 the general government deficit in the OECD area was some 2 percent of GNP more than at the beginning of the decade. The overall policy response to the second oil shock was meant to be less accommodative than to the first one. That is, the policy was designed to prevent higher oil prices from being built into domestic price expectations, even at a short-run cost of reduced output and employment. But while monetary policy in many OECD countries turned restrictive in 1979-80, success in reducing government expenditures proved much more elusive, in part because of the downturn in output and employment. Combined budget deficits of the seven Summit countries which dropped to their late 1970's low of 1.7 percent of GNP in 1979, started climbing rapidly to reach 3.7 percent in 1982. The OECD forecast for the current calendar year for these countries is a deficit of about 4.5 percent of their GNP. Rising concerns with deficits center, however, not so much on current deficit-to-GNP ratios (which are virtually the same as in 1975 -- the first year of the recovery from the previous recession), but on the prospective deficits. In popular discussions deficits have been traditionally viewed as primarily affecting macroeconomic targets of aggregate demand and price stability. But, whatever - 2 - are the merits of these rather restrictive interpretations of the role of budget deficits as automatic or discretionary stabi- lization tools, questions about the effects of government deficit spending on long-term real economic growth recently have become a focus of attention and controversy. These effects of government deficits are by no means unam- biguous, for even on a most rudimentary level of analysis the answer would depend, for instance, on whether deficits are caused by spending increases or tax cuts, or whether they are financed by monetization of the debt or by sale of government debt to the public. Similarly, conclusions may vary with such considerations as the composition of government spending that the deficits in question are supposed to finance; the kind of taxes contemplated as a substitute for deficit financing; the openness of a country's capital markets to foreign investors; public expectations generated by a prospect of continuing deficits; behavioral attitudes as reflected in, among others, saving habits; and a host of institu- tional arrangements determining the adaptability of labor, product and asset markets to changing economic conditions, all of which influence the effects of deficits on the allocation of resources within the private sector. Although the relationship between budget deficits and eco- nomic growth is complex, the problem may be made analytically and empirically tractable by phrasing the discussion in terms of prices. Thus, often the analysis is reduced to the question of the link between budget deficits and the rate of inflation and the prices of financial assets, as exemplified by interest or exchange rates. Such analyses imply that the connections between interest rates and investment or saving (or between the exchange rate and exports or imports), and between real capital accumula- tion and economic growth are thought to be fairly well understood. Therefore, if a link between budget deficits and prices of finan- cial assets could be established, a conceptual short-cut supposedly would allow the analyst to deduce the effects of budget deficits on selected macroeconomic aggregates themselves. The main purpose of this paper is to review the issue con- cerning the effects of government deficit spending on interest rates, and to some extent on exchange rates. Frequently encoun- tered assertions about the causal links between deficits and prices of financial assets will be critically examined and evalu- ated. More specifically, an attempt will be made to demonstrate that theoretical conclusions about these links have no universal validity but depend crucially, instead, on the time horizon of the analysis, the institutional and behavioral assumptions under- lying the analytical model used, the accompanying circumstances and policies postulated and the size of various economic parameters estimated or assumed. In reviewing assertions about the economic effects of budget deficits, some of the concepts frequently (and rather loosely) used in popular discussion will be clarified, 3 - empirical evidence, to the extent that it exists and is germane to the issues discussed, will be presented and the relationship between budget deficits and a number of economic variables will be examined rather extensively within alternative frameworks of economic analysis. SOME ASSERTIONS ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF DEFICITS ON THE ECONOMY Assessments of the impact of budget deficits on interest (and exchange) rates vary from