Simon Wren-Lewis:
mainly macro: Austerity and not wasting a crisis: In the short term we need stimulus, whereas fiscal discipline is a long term problem. We need to raise taxes and cut spending when times are good, not when times are bad…. The response is often to concede the macroeconomic logic, but say that promises of austerity tomorrow cannot be trusted….
Suppose the government did go for fiscal stimulus today, and this helped lead to a macroeconomic recovery. Once the recovery was complete, the underlying fiscal position (i.e. the structural or cyclically adjusted deficit) would be a little worse than today, because the stimulus would have added to debt. So if a politician is prepared to undertake austerity today, they will be even more willing to undertake it tomorrow. Of course following a recovery the actual (rather than structural) deficit may be smaller, but is our macroeconomic discourse that naive?…
[W]hen it comes to fiscal policy and deficit bias, the role of time inconsistency seems less central. The problem is not that we have a benevolent policy maker that is subject to a time inconsistency temptation; it is that we do not have a benevolent policy maker….
[C]ountries could establish rules today that were designed to only begin operating when the economy has recovered. Use the current crisis to get the rules established, but recognise that their implementation needs to be delayed because of the recession…. Is a government that commits to future austerity that begins tomorrow, any more likely to renege in the future than that same government that commits to long term austerity and starts it today? We could argue the opposite: an austerity plan in conjunction with a recession is more likely to come unstuck….
[A] government that just promises future austerity tells us very little…. If a government undertakes austerity now, we know more…. [W]e have governments that are prepared to undertake austerity now. They have demonstrated that they take the debt problem seriously. Are these preferences going to change if we delay austerity until after the recovery?…
