What Lessons Do Developing Countries Have for Fiscal Policy in the US and Other Advanced Countries?

American fiscal policy over the last decade has been somewhat procyclical, that is, destabilizing.    The U.S. government wasted the opportunity of the expansion period by running large budget deficits.   As a result, Washington in 2010 feels constrained by inherited debts to withdraw fiscal stimulus at a time when the economy is still weak.  Some emerging market and developing countries have learned how to run  countercyclical fiscal policy – saving in the boom and easing in the recession – during the same decade that rich countries forgot how to.    

The frenetic debate as to what current fiscal policy should be is of less consequence than what is the longer term regime.   When the United States was able to take advantage of the 1992-2000 boom to eliminate its budget deficit, the key legislation had been enacted in 1991 and 1993.   The deficits of the last ten years were created by legislation of 2001 and 2003.   Americans need to take a perspective longer than the annual budget cycle or the bi-annual electoral cycle [let alone the news cycle].   Bringing back intelligent fiscal policy means taking steps today to lock in long-term progress toward fiscal responsibility (such as enacting social security reform) while yet avoiding any steps that would withdraw short-term fiscal stimulus while the economy is still week.

It would help to have institutions that might insulate fiscal policy from some of the vagaries of politics.    Chile has achieved countercyclical fiscal policy over the last ten years by means of some institutions that could usefully be adopted by other countries.   Chile has a rule that targets a structural budget deficit of zero.  But that is not enough in itself, as the failures of Europe’s Stability and Growth Pact illustrate.   The key innovation that others might adopt from Chile is to vest responsibility for determining whether a given year’s deficit is structural or temporary in a panel of independent experts.   The alternative is that politicians, inclined to wishful thinking, forecast that booms will continue indefinitely, with the result that revenue is spent rather than saved.  

Two decades ago, many people had drawn a lesson from the 1980’s:  Japan’s variant of capitalism was the best model, and that other countries around the world should and would follow it.  The Japanese model quickly lost its luster in the 1990’s.

A decade ago, many thought that the lesson of the 1990’s was that the United States’ variant of capitalism was the best model, and that other countries should and would follow.  The American model lost its attractiveness in the 2000’s.

So, where should countries look now, in 2010, for models of economic success to emulate?

Perhaps they should look to the periphery of the world economy.  Some smaller and less-rich countries have experimented with policies and institutions that could usefully be adopted by some of the “advanced countries.”   Two illustrations from microeconomics.   First, Singapore pioneered the use of the price mechanism to reduce traffic congestion in its urban center.   London emulated Singapore when it successfully adopted congestion pricing in 2003;  other big cities should do the same.  Second Mexico pioneered Conditional Cash Transfers. CCT programs, which make poverty benefits contingent on children’s school attendance, have been emulated in many countries, and embraced even in New York City.

Some emerging market and developing countries also have lessons for the United States in areas of macroeconomics, specifically regarding the cyclicality of fiscal policy.      To state the message of this paper most succinctly, over the last decade countries from Chile to China have learned how to run properly counter-cyclical fiscal policy:  taking advantage of boom periods [like 2003-08] to achieve high national savings, and in particular to run budget surpluses, which then allows some fiscal ease in response to downturns [2008-09].    During this same period, advanced countries such as the United States and United Kingdom have forgotten how to run counter-cyclical fiscal policy.   Perhaps the “leaders” could look to the “followers” for some tips on how to get back on track.

1. What does it mean to draw lessons from the periphery?

Before turning to specifics, I would like to elaborate on the larger theme that advanced economies could learn some things from developing countries.   This line of argument is not meant as an attack on Western values or modes of thought.   It is not a paean to Confucian values or native folk remedies in the Andes or Africa.   In my view, when Americans lectured others on the virtues of electoral democracy, the rule of law, and market-based economics, they were right.   Where they were wrong was the arrogance of the lectures, most especially the failure to see that their own country needed to be on the receiving end just as much as developing countries.

In some cases, American or Western institutions were successfully transplanted to other countries in the past, and now needed to be re-imported.    An analogy.   In the latter part of the 19^th century the vineyards of France and other parts of Europe were destroyed by the microscopic aphid Phylloxera vastatrix.  Eventually a desperate last resort was tried: grafting susceptible European vines onto resistant American root stock, which of course had originally been imported from Europe.  Purist French vintners initially disdained what they considered compromising the refined tastes of their grape varieties.   But it saved the European vineyards, and did not impair the quality of the wine.   The New World had come to the rescue of the Old.

Countries that are small, or far-away, or newly independent, or just emerging from a devastating war, are often more free to experiment, than is the United States or other large established countries.  Not all the experiments will succeed.   But some will.   The results may include some useful lessons for others, including for the big guys. [1]

2. The U.S. debate over fiscal policy

The issue at the top of the policy agenda in the United States and UK now is fiscal policy.   Whether American fiscal policy gets back on track will certainly be an important determinant of the country’s economic performance in years to come.

The public discussion is framed as if it is a battle between conservatives who philosophically believe in strong budgets and small government, and liberals who do not.    In my view this is not the right way to characterize the debate.[2]    In the first place, the right goal should be budgets that allow surpluses in booms and deficits in recession.    In the second place, the correlation between how loudly an American politician proclaims a belief in fiscal conservatism and how likely he or she is to take corresponding policy steps is not positive.  

Three pieces of evidence to bolster the latter (surprising) proposition:

(i) The pattern of states whose Congressmen win pork barrel projects and other federal spending in their home states:   Those states that vote Republican tend to take home a significantly higher level of federal dollars (relative to taxes paid) than those states that vote Democratic.[3]    
(ii) The pattern of spending under Republican presidents.     When Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, entered the White House, not only did budget deficits rise sharply, but so did the rate of growth of federal spending.[4] 

(iii) The voting pattern among the 258 members of Congress who signed an unconditional pledge not to raise taxes:  As of 2004, they had voted for greater increases in spending than those who did not sign the pledge.[5]

For a leader to succeed in the difficult task of cutting the budget, he or she must have some understanding of the laws of arithmetic and the laws of political economy [for example that every spending item has its constituency].   Perhaps a politician who runs for office with nothing more than an anti-tax slogan, or a speech in favor of cutting waste, fraud and abuse, is unprepared to face the task required.

3. The historic shift in fiscal policies among developing countries

Right up until the most recent decade, a heavy majority of developing countries showed a pattern of fiscal policy that was procyclical or – to use a blunter word – destabilizing.[6]    This was especially true of countries that exported oil, minerals, and agricultural commodities, and particularly countries in Latin America.[7]  When world commodity markets boomed and governments should have saved the higher tax revenue, they would instead spend more.   When commodity prices turned back down, the country would be forced to cut spending, thereby exacerbating the downturn.   

Over the last decade – and perhaps in reaction to the emerging market crises of the late 1990s – many emerging market countries finally developed countercyclical or stabilizing fiscal policies.   They took advantage of the boom years 2003-2007 to run budget surpluses.   They reduced their debts, in many cases, to levels lower than the United States and other OECD countries.  By 2007, Latin America and the Caribbean had reduced its debt to 33% of GDP, as compared to 63 % in the United States.    Debt levels among the top 20 rich countries (debt/GDP ratios around 80%) are now twice those of the top 20 emerging markets.   Some emerging markets – pronounced “debt intolerant” not long ago -- have earned credit ratings higher than some so-called advanced countries.   Korea now has a better credit rating that Portugal.   Not only Chile and China, but also Malaysia, Mexico, Poland and South Africa, now have higher credit ratings than Greece or Iceland.

A stronger fiscal position is one of the reasons that countries like China could afford to undertake large and sustained fiscal stimulus in response to the 2008-09 global recession.   Other big emerging markets such as Brazil and Indonesia also found themselves freed of the need to cut spending in a recession, and were better able to sail through than the industrialized countries.   The United States and United Kingdom, by contrast, had wasted the preceding expansion running budget deficits, and hence by 2010 had come to feel heavily constrained by their debts.

4. What sort of institutions can insulate governments against political pressures to overspend in booms?

The advice to save in a boom is standard.   One would like to be able to do more than cite examples of governments that have had the courage to take away the fiscal punch bowl.    One would like an example of an institution to deliver countercyclical fiscal policy, an institution that might serve as a template for other countries, a model that can help even in times and places where the political forces to follow procyclical fiscal policy would otherwise be too strong to resist.  

The institutions that first come to mind are budget rules, such as the Stability and Growth Pact that supposedly constrains fiscal policy among euro members.    But the SGP has failed miserably, as the Greek sovereign debt troubles make clear.    The problems with a simple deficit ceiling rule such as the SGP or a Balanced Budget Amendment are well known.   If governments are not allowed to run larger budget deficits in recessions than in other times, the recessions will be exacerbated.    Indeed, the damage in that circumstance is sufficiently great that it is not politically credible that the country will stick with the rule in the first place.[8]

The alternative is a structural budget rule, one that requires the government to balance the budget on a cyclically adjusted basis.    This requires forecasts of the short-term and long-term paths of key macroeconomic variables.    (In industrialized countries, the growth rate of GDP is the most important variable.   Among producers of minerals and other basic commodities, the commodity price is critical.)     Under boom conditions, the computation of the structural budget requires an estimate of the extent to which the boom is permanent, in which case surging revenues can be largely spent, or temporary, in which case they should be saved.    A problem with most budget rules is that such estimation is made by government agencies that are subject to political pressures.    Given the genuine uncertainty that surrounds any such estimates, the political pressures need not be intense for the result to be overly optimistic forecasts of economic growth and revenues.   Those forecasts in turn are an excuse for over-spending in the boom.   

Recent research has found statistical support for a series of hypotheses regarding forecasts by official agencies that have responsibility for formulating the budget:

1)      Official forecasts of budgets and GDP are overly optimistic on average.

2)      The bias toward over-optimism is stronger at a three-year horizon.

3)      The bias is greater in booms.

4)      The bias is greater among European governments that are politically subject to the budget rules in the Stability and Growth Pact.

Thus official forecasts, if not insulated from politics, tend to be overly optimistic in booms, and the problem can be worse when the government is formally subject to a budget rule.   Chile’s structural budget institutions offer a possible solution to this problem.   Since 2000, fiscal policy in Chile has been governed by a structural budget rule that has succeeded in implementing countercyclical fiscal policy.  During the 2003-2008 boom, the result was a substantial increase in national savings, some of it dedicated to funding of pension-related liabilities of the government.  The key innovation is that the responsibility for estimating the extent to which contemporaneous copper prices and GDP have departed from their long-run averages is given to panels of independent experts and thus insulated from the political process.  

Further findings:

5)      In most countries, the real growth rate is the key macroeconomic input for budget forecasting.  In Chile it is the price of copper.

6)      Real copper prices mean-revert in the long run.  This is not always readily perceived, however.  Forecasts are more uncertain in booms.

7)      Chile’s official forecasts are not overly optimistic on average.

8)      Chile’s fiscal institutions have apparently enabled it to avoid the problem of official forecasts that unrealistically extrapolate in boom times.

Chile’s fiscal institutions could usefully be emulated everywhere, most obviously in other commodity-exporting countries, but in industrialized countries as well.  

5. What should U.S. fiscal policy be now?

What changes in American fiscal policy would be desirable at the current juncture, if politics were not an obstacle?     On the one hand, the economy is still weak.  On the other hand, if the U.S. waits until the recovery is complete, political support for tackling the deficit may vanish.  A two-part strategy is needed:

1)      Current steps to prolong the fiscal stimulus, designed to maximize bang for the buck.

2)      Current steps to lock in future progress back toward fiscal discipline in the long run.

Maximizing bang for the buck means fiscal stimulus that gives the most increase in demand per dollar added to long-term debt.     Examples of measures that would minimize bang for the buck would be the proposal to make the 2010 abolition of the estate tax permanent.   Almost as bad are proposals to prevent the Bush-passed tax cuts from expiring in 2011 for those households earning more than $250,000.  If the stimulus has to take the form of tax cuts, then the best options are extending President Obama’s “Make Work Pay” tax cuts, fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax, and extending the Bush tax cuts for those households earning less than $250,000.    Some business tax cuts, such as temporary credits for investment or hiring, could also give high bang for the buck.    But, in general, spending boosts demand more than tax cuts do, because the latter are partly saved.   It would be desirable to extend elements of the Obama stimulus such as infrastructure investment and giving money to the states so that they don’t have to lay off teachers, policemen, firemen, transportation workers and construction workers.

How does one take steps today to lock in future fiscal consolidation?    Not by raising taxes or cutting spending today (see above) nor by promising to do so in a year or two (not credible).     There are lots of economically sensible proposals for spending to eliminate, more efficient taxes to switch to, and “tax expenditures” to cut.   But most of these ideas face insuperable obstacles. 

One big reform might work best:   pass legislation today to put Social Security on a sound financial footing in the long term.    It would consist of a combination of raising the retirement age (just a little, in proportion to lengthening life spans) and slowing the rate of growth of dollar benefits for future retirees (just a little, perhaps by “progressive indexation).    If Washington could fix Social Security, it would brighten up the long-term fiscal outlook.  And yet it would create little or no drag for the current fragile recovery.

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