EXPANSIONARY FISCAL POLICIES

Pros and Cons of Using Expansionary Fiscal Policies to Fight Recessions

Pros and Cons of Using Expansionary Fiscal Policies to Fight Recessions

Fiscal policy is carried out by the legislative and/or the executive branches of government. The two main instruments of fiscal policy are government expenditures and taxes. The government collects taxes in order to finance expenditures on a number of public goods and services—for example, highways and national defense.

Budget deficits and surpluses: When government expenditures exceed government tax revenues in a given year, the government is running a budget deficit for that year. The budget deficit, which is the difference between government expenditures and tax revenues, is financed by government borrowing; the government issues long-term, interest-bearing bonds and uses the proceeds to finance the deficit. The total stock of government bonds and interest payments outstanding, from both the present and the past, is known as the national debt. Thus, when the government finances a deficit by borrowing, it is adding to the national debt. When government expenditures are less than tax revenues in a given year, the government is running a budget surplus for that year. The budget surplus is the difference between tax revenues and government expenditures. The revenues from the budget surplus are typically used to reduce any existing national debt. In the case where government expenditures are exactly equal to tax revenues in a given year, the government is running a balanced budget for that year. (Heyne 2002)

Expansionary and contractionary fiscal policy: Expansionary fiscal policy is defined as an increase in government expenditures and/or a decrease in taxes that causes the government's budget deficit to increase or its budget surplus to decrease. Contractionary fiscal policy is defined as a decrease in government expenditures and/or an increase in taxes that causes the government's budget deficit to decrease or its budget surplus to increase.

Classical and Keynesian views of fiscal policy: The belief that expansionary and contractionary fiscal policies can be used to influence macroeconomic performance is most closely associated with Keynes and his followers. The classical view of expansionary or contractionary fiscal policies is that such policies are unnecessary because there are market mechanisms—for example, the flexible adjustment of prices and wages—which serve to keep the economy at or near the natural level of real GDP at all times. Accordingly, classical economists believe that the government should run a balanced budget each and every year. (Larch and Nogueira 2009)

Combating a recession using expansionary fiscal policy: Keynesian theories of output and employment were developed in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment rates in the U.S. and Europe exceeded 25% and the growth rate of real GDP declined steadily for most of the decade. Keynes and his followers believed that the way to combat the prevailing recessionary climate was not to wait for prices and wages to adjust but to engage in expansionary fiscal policy instead. The Keynesians' argument in favor of expansionary fiscal policy is illustrated in Figure 1 ...