IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedrer/y1985isepp3-16nv.71no.5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Controversy over the federal budget deficit : a theoretical perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Dotsey

Abstract

Recently, the Office of Management and Budget projected that the fiscal 1985 federal budget deficit would exceed $200 billion and that out-year reductions would be gradual at best. These prospects have engendered a debate concerning the economic effects of government deficits and the attendant high level of government borrowing. In this article, Michael Dotsey investigates this topic theoretically using alternative macroeconomic models. Dotsey first examines a standard Keynesian model and finds that its prediction of a depressing future effect of government borrowing stems from its unrealistic view of the determinants of consumption. He then discusses the Ricardian equivalence idea that the economic effects are the same whether the government finances its expenditures by taxation or by borrowing. His discussion includes an evaluation of several objections that have been raised against Ricardian equivalence. Dotsey also suggests that one must estimate the optimal size of the government deficit as a necessary first step in evaluating current deficit levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Dotsey, 1985. "Controversy over the federal budget deficit : a theoretical perspective," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 71(Sep), pages 3-16.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedrer:y:1985:i:sep:p:3-16:n:v.71no.5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/frbrichreview/rev_frbrich198509.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    2. Barro, Robert J., 1976. "Perceived Wealth in Bonds and Social Security and the Ricardian Equivalence Theorem: Reply to Feldstein and Buchanan," Scholarly Articles 3612770, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    3. Barsky, Robert B & Mankiw, N Gregory & Zeldes, Stephen P, 1986. "Ricardian Consumers with Keynesian Propensities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 676-691, September.
    4. Lucas, Robert Jr. & Stokey, Nancy L., 1983. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 55-93.
    5. Bryant, John, 1983. "Government Irrelevance Results: A Simple Exposition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(4), pages 758-761, September.
    6. Drazen, Allan, 1978. "Government Debt, Human Capital, and Bequests in a Life-Cycle Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(3), pages 505-516, June.
    7. Joel Fried, 1985. "The Behavior of Forward Premiums on U.S. Treasury Bills," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 8511, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    8. Chan, Louis Kuo Chi, 1983. "Uncertainty and the neutrality of government financing policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 351-372.
    9. Aschauer, David Alan & Greenwood, Jeremy, 1985. "Macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 91-138, January.
    10. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June.
    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. Barro, Robert J, 1989. "The Ricardian Approach to Budget Deficits," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 37-54, Spring.
    2. B. Douglas Bernheim, 1987. "Ricardian Equivalence: An Evaluation of Theory and Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1987, Volume 2, pages 263-316, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Andrew B. Abel, "undated". "An Analysis of Fiscal Policy Under Operative and Inoperative Bequest Motives," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 10-87, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    4. Elmendorf, Douglas W. & Gregory Mankiw, N., 1999. "Government debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1615-1669, Elsevier.
    5. Barsky, Robert B & Mankiw, N Gregory & Zeldes, Stephen P, 1986. "Ricardian Consumers with Keynesian Propensities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 676-691, September.
    6. Jonathan Heathcote, 2005. "Fiscal Policy with Heterogeneous Agents and Incomplete Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(1), pages 161-188.
    7. Frenkel, Jacob A & Razin, Assaf, 1987. "Fiscal Policies and the World Economy; An Intertemporal Approach (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987)," MPRA Paper 20438, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Croushore, Dean, 1996. "Ricardian Equivalence with Wage-Rate Uncertainty," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(3), pages 279-293, August.
    9. Alan J. Auerbach, 1990. "Public Sector Dynamics," NBER Working Papers 3508, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Roberto Ricciuti, 2003. "Assessing Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 55-78, February.
    11. Karen Smith Conway, 1994. "Reconsidering the Effects of Fiscal Policy On Private Sector Behavior: a Unifying View of Neutrality," Public Finance Review, , vol. 22(2), pages 195-221, April.
    12. Kimball, Miles S & Mankiw, N Gregory, 1989. "Precautionary Saving and the Timing of Taxes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 863-879, August.
    13. James Pemberton, 2004. "Ricardian Consumers With Non‐Keynesian (And Possibly Ricardian) Propensities," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 51(1), pages 95-104, February.
    14. Andrew B. Abel, "undated". "The Implications of Insurance for the Efficacy of Fiscal Policy," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 06-88, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    15. Koumparoulis, Dimitrios, 2006. "Ευρωπαϊκή Δημοσιονομική Πολιτική Και Οικονομική Μεγέθυνση: Η Νεοκλασική Οικονομική Θεωρία Για Την Περίπτωση Της Ελλάδας [European Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth: The Neoclassical Economic Theory," MPRA Paper 44310, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:8:y:2003:i:11:p:1-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Willem L. Heeringa & Job Swank, 2019. "Heterogeneous Consumers, Credit Rationing, and Tax-Benefit Policies," De Economist, Springer, vol. 167(2), pages 105-126, June.
    18. Aoki Takaaki, 2011. "On the Implications of Two-Sided Altruism in Human Capital Based OLG Model," Asian Journal of Law and Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(2), pages 1-40, July.
    19. Frédéric Gonand, 2006. "Une politique budgétaire keynésienne neutralisant les stabilisateurs automatiques en haut de cycle : le cas de la France en 2000-2001," Working Papers hal-00243039, HAL.
    20. Emmanuel Thibault, 2001. "Labor immigration and long-run welfare in a growth model with heterogenous agents and endogenous labor supply," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 14(2), pages 391-407.
    21. Lawrence Christiano & Daisuke Ikeda, 2011. "Government Policy, Credit Markets and Economic Activity," NBER Working Papers 17142, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    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:fedrer:y:1985:i:sep:p:3-16:n:v.71no.5. 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: Christian Pascasio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbrius.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.