The flaws in Britain’s fiscal policy
“Macroeconomic performance over the past decade has been strong and steady, owing much to structural reforms and improvements in policies and policy frameworks.” This is the highly positive judgment of the International Monetary Fund in its latest assessment of the British economy.* Nevertheless, the report does pose a number of questions, not least about the fiscal framework.
As the IMF also notes, “economic growth has been relatively rapid and stable, unemployment has fallen to one of the lowest rates among industrial countries and inflation has been subdued”. This must be the first extended period that the UK has outperformed much of western Europe since the middle of the 19th century.
For this the country owes most to Margaret Thatcher. It was she who, as prime minister, took the risk of introducing unpopular reforms. Equally, without the decisions taken by her successor John Major, and the chancellors Norman Lamont and Kenneth Clarke, after the UK's exit from the exchange rate mechanism in 1992, the new Labour government would not have inherited a stable, low-inflation economy. Mr Brown's achievement as chancellor is to have built upon the legacy he inherited. In macroeconomic policy, in particular, he has institutionalised competence. This is most obviously true of monetary policy. Indeed, the IMF staff found it hard to offer criticisms either of the policy framework, described as “state of the art”, or of the Bank of England's policies. The fiscal policy framework is a somewhat different matter.
This does not mean that the UK confronts serious fiscal difficulties, since the UK's net public debt is the lowest in the Group of Seven leading high-income countries. Nevertheless, the general government fiscal deficit last year was greater than that in France, Germany, Italy and Canada. Moreover, the deterioration in the UK's fiscal position since 1999 was bigger than that of any G7 country, other than the US. This raises questions not only about whether the chancellor will meet his fiscal rules, going forward, but whether they need to be modified.
On the first of these points, the IMF shares the view of most outside analysts, including the Institute for Fiscal Studies, that a fiscal adjustment of about 1 per cent of gross domestic product will probably be needed.** The reason for this difference in judgment is partly that the Treasury is more optimistic about the buoyancy of fiscal revenue. But it is also because most outsiders believe the economy is already close to full capacity, while the Treasury is more optimistic.
These differences of opinion suggest one respect in which the operation of the fiscal framework needs to be modified. Determining the cyclical position should be transferred to an independent agency.
Four other questions about the operation of the framework arise.
The first is whether the rules themselves the “golden rule”, which calls for a balanced current budget over the cycle, and the “sustainable debt” rule, which calls for net public debt to be below 40 per cent of GDP need to be modified. My response is that this would make sense only if we want the government to contribute to overall national savings.
The second question is whether it is sensible to make the target asymmetric. At present the aim is a current balance, or better, over the cycle. But the Treasury needs to aim for a big current surplus to be confident of achieving this.
This links to a third question, namely, whether probabilities should be judged explicitly. At present,risk is handled, instead, by taking deliberately cautious assumptions, above all on the prospective rate of economic growth.
The fourth question is whether it makes sense for the target to be backward looking. At present, the achievement of the golden rule is assessed over an entire cycle. This means that large surpluses in one stage of the cycle can be offset by large deficits in another. This is potentially destabilising.
These questions could be answered by having a forward-looking symmetric target, with explicit recognition of probabilities. This approach would be very similar to that adopted towards inflation. It should attract the Treasury because it would eliminate unnecessary embarrassment over whether an arbitrary target is met by a few billion pounds, or not.
The operation of fiscal policy could, therefore, be further improved. But the most important questions are, instead, whether government policies are helping or damaging the economy and whether taxes are being raised and money spent as sensibly as possible. I plan to turn to these in subsequent pre-election columns.
* IMF Executive Board Concludes 2004 Article IV Consultation with the United Kingdom, March 8 2005
** The IFS Green Budget: January 2005
英国财政政策的缺陷
“过去十年来，宏观经济运行保持了良好、稳健的态势，这在很大程度上要归功于各项政策和政策框架的结构性改革和改善。”这是国际货币基金组织(IMF)在最近一次评估英国经济后给予的高度评价*。然而，该报告也的确提出了不少问题，内容不仅仅限于财政框架方面。
国际货币基金组织同时指出：“经济保持了相对快速、稳定的增长速度，失业率降到工业国家最低水平之列，通货膨胀也比较缓和。”这肯定是19世纪中叶以来英国经济首次在较长时期内超越多数西欧国家。
在这一点上，英国最需要感谢玛格丽特?撒切尔。是她在担任英国首相期间冒险推行不受人欢迎的改革。同样，如果英国在1992年退出汇率机制后，继任首相约翰?梅杰以及财政大臣诺曼?拉蒙和肯尼斯＃克拉克没有采取种种决策的话，新执政的工党政府也不会从保守党政府那里继承一个稳定、低通胀的经济环境。布朗先生担任财政大臣时期所取得的成就，就是将其所继承的前任政府的遗产继续发扬光大。尤其在宏观经济政策方面，他从制度上保障了胜任能力。这点在货币政策方面表现得尤为突出。确实，国际货币基金组织的工作人员发现：无论是政策框架(IMF称之为“最先进的”)，还是英格兰银行出台的各类政策都无懈可击。然而，财政政策框架则有所不同。
这并不意味着英国正面临严重的财政困难，因为英国的公共债务净值在领先的高收入“七国集团”(G7)中是最低的。然而，英国去年的一般政府财政赤字却高于法国、德国、意大利和加拿大。此外，英国自1999年以来财政状况的恶化程度也比除美国以外的任何G7国家都更为严重。这不仅引发人们质疑这位财政大臣能否在未来遵守他自己的财政规则，更提出了这些财政规则是否需要修订的问题。
在第一个问题上，国际货币基金组织与包括英国财政研究所(Institute for Fiscal Studies)在内的多数外部分析机构持相同观点，即很可能有必要对国内生产总值进行1%左右的财政调整**。之所以在判断上出现分歧，部分原因是英国财政部对财政收入增长持更乐观的态度，同时也因为多数外部评论员认为英国经济已经接近最大产能，而英国财政部对此则更为乐观。
这些观点上的分歧揭示出，财政框架在某一运行层面仍需做出调整。确定经济处于运行周期哪一部位的工作应交由独立机构负责。
有关财政政策框架运行还有其他四个问题。
第一个问题是，这些规则(即“黄金准则”， 即在整个经济周期内保持预算平衡，以及“可持续债务”准则，即公共债务低于国内生产总值的40%)本身是否需要修改。对此，我的意见是，只有当我们希望政府能够增加总体国民储蓄时，这样做才有意义。
第二个问题是，目标不对称是否明智。现有的目标是当期财政平衡，最好能实现整个经济运行周期内的财政平衡。但财政部需要更大的财政盈余，才能有足够信心实现这一目标。
这就引出了第三个问题，即是否要对这些目标的实现概率做出明确判断。目前，处理风险的方式是人为作出审慎假设，尤其是预期经济增长率。
第四个问题是财政政策的目标是否应考虑历史因素。目前，人们是根据整个经济运行周期对黄金准则运用的成功与否进行评估。这意味着财政周期内某一阶段的大量盈余可能会被另一阶段的大量赤字所抵消。这会带来潜在的不稳定因素。
要回答这些问题，我们可以在明确认定目标实现概率的基础上，确定一个前瞻性的对称目标。这可能与处理通胀所采取的方式极为相似。财政部应该对此颇感兴趣，因为这将避免不必要的尴尬，即实际结果与人为制定的目标相差几十亿英镑。
因此，财政政策的运行仍有改善空间。但最重要的问题是，目前政府的政策对经济发展是有利还是有弊，税收和支出是否已尽可能被合理利用。
* 国际货币基金组织执行委员会与英国结束2004年第四条磋商(2004 Article IV Consultation)，2005年3月8日
**《英国财政研究所绿色预算》，2005年1月
作者电子邮件：
martin.wolf@ft.com作者简介：马丁?沃尔夫(Martin Wolf)是《金融时报》的副主编(associate editor)和首席经济评论家。他对全球经济有着精辟的深刻分析，获得了国际上各界广泛普遍的承认赞赏。最近，在他荣获2003年度“最佳商务记者奖”评奖中，他获得了其中的“十年杰出成就奖”等殊荣。沃尔夫先生1971年毕业于牛津大学，获经济学硕士。然后，他到世界银行任职工作，并于1974年出任世行资深经济学家。1999年以来，他一直是每年一度的“世界经济论坛”的特邀评委成员。
