Fiscal policy

Fiscal stability criteria

Overview

National legislatures have, from time to time, sought to impose constitutional limits upon government borrowing, often with the objective of limiting government activity, and sometimes in order to avert the danger of default. In some countries, notably the United States, there have even been attempts at "balanced budget amendments" that would forbid all borrowing, even for the purpose of investment. In recent years, the practice of accepting self-imposed limits has also been adopted by governments - a practice which, besides being electorally popular, serves the purpose of promoting investor confidence in the integrity of their bonds. Among developing countries, the development of international capital mobility has made the maintenance of investor confidence a policy imperative because panics among investors and anticipations of default by speculators have been a common cause of sovereign default - as explained by Paul Krugman . Paul Krugman explains the International Monetary Fund's apparently perverse interpretation of the Washington Consensus as requiring the avoidance of deficits, even in periods of recession as a confidence-building tactic.

The maintenance of investor confidence is a matter of mutual concern among governments because crises that can lead to sovereign defaults can be contagious, in much the same way that bank runs can generate banking panics. That consideration has prompted currency unions such as the European Monetary Union to set up deficit-limiting rules and monitoring systems.

The UK's Code for Fiscal Stability

In November 1997 the British government announced its adoption of two rules of fiscal conduct:

- a "golden rule":that over the economic cycle, the government would only borrow to invest and not for public consumption, and

- a "sustainable investment rule": that over the economic cycle, the government would ensure the level of public debt as a proportion of national income is held at a stable and prudent level (subsequently interpreted as 40 per cent of gdp);

and an analysis published by the Treasury in 2008 concluded that:

- the average surplus on the current budget over the previous economic cycle was positive, thus meeting the golden rule; and,

- public sector net debt remained below the 40 per cent of GDP limit of the sustainable investment rule over the cycle.

But in November 2008 the government announced the replacement of those rules by a "temporary operating rule" under which it would set policies to improve the cyclically adjusted current budget each year, once the economy emerges from the downturn, so that it would reach balance with debt falling as a proportion of GDP once the global shocks had worked their way through the economy in full.

The EU's Growth and Stability Pact

The Growth and Stability Pact that was introduced as part of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, set arbitrary limits upon member countries' budget deficits and levels of national debt at 3 per cent and 60 per cent of gdp respectively. Following multiple breaches of those limits, the pact has since been renegotiated to introduce the flexibility necessary to take account of changing economic conditions. Revisions introduced in 2005 relaxed the pact's enforcement procedures by introducing "medium-term budgetary objectives" that are differentiated across countries and can be revised when a major structural reform is implemented; and by providing for abrogation of the procedures during periods of low or negative economic growth .