Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/7837.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Perspectives on the Budget Surplus

Author

Listed:
  • Alan J. Auerbach
  • William G. Gale
Abstract
This paper provides alternative measures of federal budget surpluses over 10-year and long-term horizons. Official baseline budget forecasts are based on a series of statutory requirements that may be at variance with reasonable expectation. More plausible notions of current policy toward discretionary spending, taxes and retirement trust funds imply that surpluses over the next 10 years will be substantially smaller than the baseline forecasts indicate. Properly accounting for long-term imbalances in social security and the rest of the budget implies that, under plausible definitions of current policy, the federal government faces a long-term shortfall.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan J. Auerbach & William G. Gale, 2000. "Perspectives on the Budget Surplus," NBER Working Papers 7837, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7837
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w7837.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan J. Auerbach, 1994. "The US Fiscal Problem: Where We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1994, Volume 9, pages 141-186, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Alan J. Auerbach & Kevin A. Hassett, 1999. "Uncertainty and the Design of Long-Run Fiscal Policy," NBER Working Papers 7036, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ben S. Bernanke & Vincent R. Reinhart & Brian P. Sack, 2004. "Monetary Policy Alternatives at the Zero Bound: An Empirical Assessment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 35(2), pages 1-100.
    2. Michael J. Fleming, 2001. "Financial market implications of the federal debt paydown," Staff Reports 120, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    3. Germinal G. Van, 2022. "The Theory of Efficient Growth," Journal of Economics and Econometrics, Economics and Econometrics Society, vol. 65(2), pages 68-91.
    4. Mstislav Afanasyev & Natalia Shash, 2020. "Budget Surplus Management And Fiscal Fine Tuning," Public administration issues, Higher School of Economics, issue 6, pages 84-97.
    5. Ozili, Peterson, 2018. "Tax Evasion and Financial Instability," MPRA Paper 88430, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Gale, William G. & Potter, Samara R., 2002. "An Economic Evaluation of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 55(1), pages 133-186, March.
    7. George J. Hall & Stefan Krieger, 2000. "Tax Smoothing Implications of the Federal Debt Paydown," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(2), pages 253-302.
    8. Gale, William G. & Potter, Samara R., 2002. "An Economic Evaluation of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 55(N. 1), pages 133-186, March.
    9. Easterly, william, 2001. "Growth implosions, debt explosions, and my Aunt Marilyn : do growth slowdowns cause public debt crises?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2531, The World Bank.
    10. Haffert, Lukas, 2016. "Permanent budget surpluses as a fiscal regime," MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/1, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    11. Douglas W. Elmendorf & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 2000. "Social Security Reform and National Saving in an Era of Budget Surpluses," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(2), pages 1-72.
    12. Vincent Reinhart & Brian Sack, 2000. "The Economic Consequences of Disappearing Government Debt," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(2), pages 163-220.
    13. Douglas W. Elmendorf & Jeffrey B. Liebman & David W. Wilcox, 2001. "Fiscal Policy and Social Security Policy During the 1990s," NBER Working Papers 8488, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. John Stephenson & Grant Scobie, 2002. "The Economics of Population Ageing," Treasury Working Paper Series 02/04, New Zealand Treasury.
    2. Kazakova, Maria & Nesterova, Kristina, 2015. "Long-Term Forecast of the Main Parameters of the Budgetary System of Russia," Published Papers 2309, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    3. Frankel, Jeffrey A. & Schreger, Jesse, 2012. "Over-Optimistic Official Forecasts in the Eurozone and Fiscal Rules," Working Paper Series rwp12-041, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    4. Henry J. Aaron, 2000. "Presidential address- Seeing through the fog," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 193-206.
    5. -, 2003. "Budget reform in OECD member countries: common trends," Sede de la CEPAL en Santiago (Estudios e Investigaciones) 34911, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    6. Viktor Novysedlák & Erik Bugyi, 2014. "How to Measure Public Finance Consolidation," Discussion Papers Discussion Paper No. 2/20, Council for Budget Responsibility.
    7. Krishanu Pradhan, 2015. "Fiscal Sustainability of India’s National Food Security Act 2013," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 9(2), pages 133-156, May.
    8. Kruse, Agneta, 2002. "Ageing Populations and Intergenerational Risk-sharing in PAYG Pension Schemes," Working Papers 2002:18, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    9. Rotte, Ralph & Zimmermann, Klaus F, 1998. "Fiscal Restraint and the Political Economy of EMU," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(3-4), pages 385-406, March.
    10. Auerbach, Alan J., 1999. "On the Performance and Use of Government Revenue Forecasts," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 52(4), pages 765-782, December.
    11. Arai, Natsuki, 2020. "Investigating the inefficiency of the CBO’s budgetary projections," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1290-1300.
    12. Krishanu Pradhan, 2016. "Ricardian Approach to Fiscal Sustainability in India," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 10(4), pages 499-529, November.
    13. Jeffrey Frankel & Jesse Schreger, 2013. "Over-optimistic official forecasts and fiscal rules in the eurozone," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 149(2), pages 247-272, June.
    14. Bodrova, Vera & Gvozdeva, Margarita & Kazakova, Maria, 2015. "Methods of Long-term Forecasting: Comparative Analysis and Foreign Experience of Applying," Published Papers 2310, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    15. J. Bradford De Long, "undated". "Keynesianism, Pennsylvania-Avenue Style: Some Economic Consequences of the 1946 Employment Act," J. Bradford De Long's Working Papers _105, University of California at Berkeley, Economics Department.
    16. Auerbach, Alan J., 2001. "US fiscal policy in a (brief?) era of surpluses," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 371-386, December.
    17. Jeffrey Frankel, 2013. "A Solution to Fiscal Procyclicality: The Structural Budget Institutions Pioneered by Chile," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Luis Felipe Céspedes & Jordi Galí (ed.),Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Performance, edition 1, volume 17, chapter 9, pages 323-391, Central Bank of Chile.
    18. Pradhan, Krishanu, 2014. "Fiscal sustainability of national food security act, 2013 in India," Working Papers 332, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    19. Jeffrey Frankel, 2011. "A Lesson from the South for Fiscal Policy in the US and Other Advanced Countries," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 53(3), pages 407-430, September.
    20. Auerbach, Alan J. & Hassett, Kevin, 2007. "Optimal long-run fiscal policy: Constraints, preferences and the resolution of uncertainty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 1451-1472, May.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:7837. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.