IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedder/y1999iqiip2-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The new budget outlook: policymakers respond to the surplus

Author

Listed:
  • Alan D. Viard

Abstract

Economic events and policy changes have unexpectedly moved the federal budget into surplus. If current policies are maintained, surpluses are expected to continue for twenty years, although deficits are expected to return after 2020. Congress and President Clinton are considering proposals to reduce the projected surpluses through tax cuts or spending increases. In this article, Alan Viard describes the recent budget events and the new budget outlook. He analyzes the effects of the proposed tax cuts and spending increases, finding that they are likely to reduce national saving and lower future output. He concludes that the desirability of this outcome depends on value judgments about the needs and rights of current and future generations.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan D. Viard, 1999. "The new budget outlook: policymakers respond to the surplus," Economic and Financial Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Q II, pages 2-15.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedder:y:1999:i:qii:p:2-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/efr/1999/efr9902a.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ronald Lee & Jonathan Skinner, 1999. "Will Aging Baby Boomers Bust the Federal Budget?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 117-140, Winter.
    2. Maarten Allers & Jakob De Haan & Flip De Kam, 1998. "Using Survey Data To Test for Ricardian Equivalence," Public Finance Review, , vol. 26(6), pages 565-582, November.
    3. Olivia S. Mitchell, 1998. "Administrative Costs in Public and Private Retirement Systems," NBER Chapters, in: Privatizing Social Security, pages 403-456, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Barclay, Michael J. & Pearson, Neil D. & Weisbach, Michael S., 1998. "Open-end mutual funds and capital-gains taxes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 3-43, July.
    5. Hayashi, Fumio & Altonji, Joseph & Kotlikoff, Laurence, 1996. "Risk-Sharing between and within Families," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(2), pages 261-294, March.
    6. Jagadeesh Gokhale & Laurence J. Kotlikoff & John Sabelhaus, 1996. "Understanding the Postwar Decline in U.S. Saving: A Cohort Analysis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 27(1), pages 315-407.
    7. Campbell, John Y. & Mankiw, N. Gregory, 1991. "The response of consumption to income : A cross-country investigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 723-756, May.
    8. Burtless, Gary, 1997. "Social Security's Long-Term Budget Outlook," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 50(3), pages 399-412, September.
    9. Gruen, David W R, 1991. "What People Know and What Economists Think They Know: Surveys on Ricardian Equivalence," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(56), pages 1-9, June.
    10. Burtless, Gary, 1997. "Social Security's Long-Term Budget Outlook," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 50(3), pages 399-412, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Orazio P. Attanasio, 1998. "Consumption Demand," NBER Working Papers 6466, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Bertocco Giancarlo & Fanelli Luca & Paruolo Paolo, 2002. "On the determinants of inflation in Italy: evidence of cost-push effects before the European Monetary Union," Economics and Quantitative Methods qf0223, Department of Economics, University of Insubria.
    3. Gokhale, Jagadeesh & Kotlikoff, Laurence J. & Sefton, James & Weale, Martin, 2001. "Simulating the transmission of wealth inequality via bequests," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 93-128, January.
    4. Kotlikoff, Laurence J., 2002. "Generational policy," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 27, pages 1873-1932, Elsevier.
    5. Douglas W. Elmendorf & Louise Sheiner, 2000. "Should America save for its old age? Population aging, national saving, and fiscal policy," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2000-03, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "Consumption and Saving: Models of Intertemporal Allocation and Their Implications for Public Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 693-751, September.
    7. Bernasconi, Michele & Kirchkamp, Oliver & Paruolo, Paolo, 2009. "Do fiscal variables affect fiscal expectations? Experiments with real world and lab data," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 253-265, May.
    8. Laurence Kotlikoff & Felix Kubler & Andrey Polbin & Jeffrey Sachs & Simon Scheidegger, 2021. "Making Carbon Taxation A Generational Win Win," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(1), pages 3-46, February.
    9. Seth G. Benzell & Eugene Goryunov & Maria Kazakova & Laurence J. Kotlikoff & Guillermo LaGarda & Kristina Nesterova & Andrey Zubarev, 2015. "Simulating Russia’s and Other Large Economies’ Challenging and Interconnected Transitions," NBER Working Papers 21269, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Kotlikoff, Laurence & Kubler, Felix & Polbin, Andrey & Scheidegger, Simon, 2024. "Can today’s and tomorrow’s world uniformly gain from carbon taxation?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    11. David E. Altig & Jagadeesh Gokhale, 1997. "Social Security privatization: a simple proposal," Working Papers (Old Series) 9703, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    12. Makoto Saito, 2001. "An Empirical Investigation of Intergenerational Consumption Distribution: A Comparison among Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom," NBER Chapters, in: Aging Issues in the United States and Japan, pages 135-168, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Jagadeesh Gokhale & Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 2002. "The Impact of Social Security and Other Factors on the Distribution of Wealth," NBER Chapters, in: The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform, pages 85-114, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 1998. "Simulating the Privatization of Social Security in General Equilibrium," NBER Chapters, in: Privatizing Social Security, pages 265-311, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Ronald Lee & Jonathan Skinner, 1999. "Will Aging Baby Boomers Bust the Federal Budget?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 117-140, Winter.
    16. Douglas W. Elmendorf & Louise M. Sheiner, 2000. "Should America Save for Its Old Age? Fiscal Policy, Population Aging, and National Saving," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 57-74, Summer.
    17. Orazio Attanasio & Margherita Borella, 2006. "Stochastic Components of Individual Consumption: A Time Series Analysis of Grouped Data," NBER Working Papers 12456, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Feldstein, Martin & Liebman, Jeffrey B., 2002. "Social security," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 32, pages 2245-2324, Elsevier.
    19. Jacob Bikker & Jan de Dreu, 2006. "Pension fund efficiency: the impact of scale, governance and plan design," DNB Working Papers 109, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    20. Singal, Vijay & Xu, Zhaojin, 2011. "Selling winners, holding losers: Effect on fund flows and survival of disposition-prone mutual funds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 2704-2718, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Budget; Budget deficits;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedder:y:1999:i:qii:p:2-15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Amy Chapman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbdaus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.