25 February 2012

Karl Whelan: Golden rule or golden straightjacket?

This column argues that the rules in the Fiscal Compact severely restrict a country's ability to use fiscal policy to stabilise its economy and will often require debt levels far below those considered sensible. The rules should be changed before they become a straightjacket.

What is noteworthy about the new EU Fiscal Compact... is that it does not even correspond to current mainstream thinking among economists as to how an ideal fiscal policy framework should operate. I suspect most economists would agree that such a framework should have two key elements:

• First, it should guide an economy towards a moderate and sustainable level of public debt.
• Second, it should keep public debt fluctuating around this moderate level in a countercyclical fashion, with higher-than-usual deficits in times of recession being offset by improvements in the fiscal position during expansions.

In relation to the first element, moderate debt levels, the compact emphasises the need for an explicit trajectory whereby countries can return towards a 60 per cent debt-to-GDP ratio. I think this addition to the Stability and Growth Pact is a positive one and one could make an argument for placing it on a formal EU-treaty footing.

Far less positive, however, is the so-called golden rule setting a legally binding maximum structural deficit of a 0.5 per cent of GDP when a country has a debt ratio above 60 per cent and a maximum of 1 per cent when a country has a debt ratio lower than 60 per cent. In addition, independent of the ‘cyclical adjustments’ that are factored in to structural deficits, the maximum actual deficit shall be 3 per cent of GDP.

The idea of the desirability of balancing the national budget may appear self-evident to its designers, embodying as it does the wisdom the famous Swabian housewife. However, an economy is not a single household and, as we know from the paradox of thrift, these comforting comparisons can be highly misleading when applied at an aggregate level.

The truth is that, far from golden, this rule is a poor one that doesn’t correspond to either of the principles of good fiscal policy just mentioned.

In relation to long-run debt levels, this rule, if followed over time, will lead to debt ratios well below those considered sustainable and moderate. An economy’s debt-to-GDP ratio tends to converge towards the ratio of the average deficit percentage to the average growth rate of nominal GDP. So, for example, an economy with an average growth rate of nominal GDP of say, 4 per cent, following a policy in which average deficits are a maximum of 1 per cent, will end up with a maximum debt-to-GDP ratio of 25 per cent, far below what is required to operate a sensible and stabilising fiscal policy.

These rules will also severely limit the ability to use fiscal policies for stabilisation purposes in a manner consistent with moderate long-run debt levels. For example, a deficit of 2.4 per cent per year would, over time, stabilise the debt-GDP ratio at 60 per cent in an economy in which nominal GDP grew at an average 4 per cent pace. Cyclical deviations of 2 or 3 percentage points around such an average deficit of 2.4 per cent would also be possible without endangering fiscal stability. However, the 3 per cent maximum deficit rule severely limits the ability to run countercyclical policies of this type that would still be consistent with moderate levels of debt.

Because eurozone Member States cannot set their own exchange rates or interest rates and do not receive any federal transfers, these severe restrictions on the only available macro-economic policy tool are likely to be particularly damaging to macro-economic stability in the eurozone. Indeed, they may contribute to its long-run failure rather than help to keep it together.

Finally, the legal invocation of the concept of a structural deficit is unfortunate. This is a theoretical concept and empirical measures of it can differ widely depending on how the analysis is done. Legally-binding rules that rely on impossible-to-measure quantities are likely to run into trouble sooner or later.

Without doubt, the political realities of the post-ESM eurozone require a greater commitment to fiscal responsibility but Europe could have achieved this goal with a far better set of rules than were arrived at in this hastily drawn-up treaty. At least those who inflicted damage on the world economy by sticking to the Gold Standard in the 1930s can claim to have been following prevailing economic thinking. The politicians who have designed these rules will have no such defence.

Ideally, debate about this treaty in all European countries should move beyond misleading analogies about the prudence of households balancing their books to focus on its actual long-run implications. Once passed into treaty form, it will be extremely difficult for European citizens to change these rules. Hopefully, it is not too late to prevent the golden rule from becoming a golden straightjacket.

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