...result a substantial amount of research, which is summarized in several excellent surveys. (2) The rapid but short-lived transition to budget surpluses in the late 1990s, followed by the sharp reversal in budget outcomes since 2000, has raised interest in this topic again.

Economists tend to view the aggregate effects of fiscal policy from one of three perspectives. To sharpen the distinctions among them, it is helpful to consider a deficit induced by a lump-sum tax cut today followed by a lump-sum tax increase in the future, holding the path of government purchases and marginal tax rates constant. Under the Ricardian equivalence hypothesis proposed by Barro, such a deficit will be fully offset by an increase in private saving, as taxpayers recognize that the tax is merely postponed, not canceled. The offsetting increase in private saving means that the deficit will have no effect on national saving, interest rates, exchange rates, future domestic production, or future national income. A second model, the small open economy view, suggests that budget deficits do reduce national saving but, at the same time, induce increased capital inflows from abroad that finance the entire reduction. As a result, domestic production does not decline and interest rates do not rise, but future national income falls because of the added burden of servicing the increased foreign debt. A third model, which we call the conventional view, likewise holds that deficits reduce national saving but that this reduction is at least partly reflected in lower domestic investment. In this model, budget deficits partly crowd out private investment and partly increase borrowing from abroad; the combined effect reduces future national income and future domestic production. The reduction in domestic investment in this model is brought about by an increase in interest rates, thus establishing a connection between deficits and interest rates.

We emphasize throughout this paper that the relationship between deficits and national saving is central to the analysis of the economic effects of fiscal policy. National saving, which is the sum of private and government saving, finances national investment, which is the sum of domestic investment and net foreign investment. (3) The accumulation of assets, whether located in the United States or abroad, associated with national saving means that the capital stock owned by Americans rises. The returns to those additional assets raise the income of Americans in the future.

An increase in the budget deficit reduces national saving unless it is fully offset by an increase in private saving. If national saving falls, national investment and future national income must fall as well, all else equal. Therefore, to the extent that budget deficits reduce national saving, they reduce future national income. This reduction occurs even if there is no increase in domestic interest rates. In that case the reduction in national saving associated with budget deficits manifests itself solely in increased borrowing from abroad (the outcome under the small open economy view). This is the sense in which the effect of deficits on interest rates and exchange rates (which distinguishes the small open economy view from the conventional view) is subsidiary to the question of the effect on national saving (to which the Ricardian view gives a different answer than the other two).

A key objective of this paper is to generate tests of the empirical effects of budget deficits on national saving and interest rates and therefore to help distinguish among the three models empirically. We test the Ricardian view against the small open economy and conventional views by estimating the effect on national saving of budget deficits associated with tax reductions, after controlling for government purchases, transfers, marginal tax rates, and other factors. Our empirical results imply that an increase in the budget deficit substantially reduces national saving: specifically, after controlling for other factors, a one-dollar increase in the deficit reduces national saving by between 50 and 80 cents. This suggests that the Ricardian view is not a good approximation to reality.

We then test the small open economy view against the conventional view by examining whether deficits affect interest rates. Our results suggest that the emergence of larger projected budget deficits raises long-term interest rates in the United States. Specifically, we find that a sustained increase in the projected unified deficit equal to 1 percent of GDP raises interest rates by 25 to 35 basis points, (4) and a sustained increase of that magnitude in the projected primary deficit (the unified deficit excluding interest payments) raises interest rates by 40 to 70 basis points. Indeed, despite a rancorous public debate, there appears to be a surprising degree of convergence in recent estimates of the effects of fiscal policy on interest rates: results from a variety of econometric studies imply that an increase in the unified deficit of 1 percent of GDP, sustained over ten years, would raise interest rates by 30 to 60 basis points. This estimated relationship between deficits and interest rates not only provides further evidence against the Ricardian view, but also implies that the conventional view is a better description of reality for the United States than the small open economy view.

A second objective of the paper is to apply these findings to an analysis of recent and proposed or expected future fiscal policy actions. Under plausible assumptions described below, the unified deficit over the next decade will average about 3.5 percent of GDP. Our estimates imply that such deficits will reduce national saving over that period by between 2 and 3 percent of GDP. Therefore, after ten years, assets held by Americans will be lower, by 20 to 30 percent of GDP, than they otherwise would be; with a rate of return on capital in the range of 6 percent, this implies that national income will be between 1 and 2 percent lower on an ongoing basis by 2015. This suggests that current fiscal policy trends will exert a significant drag on future economic performance and living standards. In addition, our estimated interest rate effects imply that making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent would raise interest rates by enough to raise the cost of capital for new investment even after taking account of the direct effects of the tax cuts, which means that long-term investment and economic growth would fall.

The first section of the paper describes recent historical patterns and current projections for the federal debt, deficits, and their components. The second section provides a framework for evaluating fiscal policy by comparing the three models identified above and by discussing several other ways in which deficits can affect economic performance. The third section provides a preliminary empirical analysis, whose results generally support the conventional view, and gives a sense of the magnitude of the effects of fiscal policy under the conventional approach in a simplified model. The fourth section examines the effects of deficits on aggregate consumption, and the fifth section explores the links between deficits and interest rates. We conclude by discussing some of the implications of our findings.

Fiscal Policy: Trends and Projections

The federal budget deficit in any year can be measured in a variety of ways; the most appropriate measure is likely to depend on the particular model or application of interest. The most widely used measure, the unified budget balance, is fundamentally a cash-flow metric that includes both the Social Security and the non-Social Security components of the federal budget. To a first approximation, the unified balance shows the extent to which the federal government borrows or lends in credit markets during the year. (5) For some purposes it is more informative to examine the primary budget balance, which excludes net interest payments. Another measure, the standardized budget balance, adjusts the unified budget for the business cycle and certain special items. (6) We focus primarily on these traditional cash-flow measures. In particular, although we recognize the importance of the implicit debt created by promises of future government benefits, we do not incorporate these promises directly into our analysis, in part because historical time series of this accrued debt are not generally available, and in part because it is unclear how the market and households value this implicit debt relative to the government's explicit debt. (7)

Figure 1 shows the surplus or deficit in the federal unified budget and in the standardized budget, both since 1962, as reported by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). (8) Both measures clearly show an increase in the deficit relative to GDP in the early and mid-1980s, a dramatic correction over the course of the 1990s, and an equally dramatic deterioration since 2000. In fiscal 2004 the unified deficit was 3.6 percent of potential GDP, and the standardized deficit about 2.5 percent. As the figure shows, deficits of this magnitude are large relative to historical norms. Even so, the current budget situation would not be a concern if future fiscal prospects were auspicious. Unfortunately, those prospects are in fact dismal.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The top line in figure 2 shows the CBO's baseline projections for the deficit in the unified budget as of September 2004. (9) The projections assume that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire as scheduled. Summing the annual projections results in a ten-year baseline unified budget deficit of $2.3 trillion, or 1.5 percent of cumulative GDP over that period, for fiscal 2005 to 2014, with the deficits shrinking over time.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

This baseline projection is intended to provide a benchmark for legislative purposes. It is explicitly not intended to be a projection of actual or likely budget outcomes or a measure of the financial status of the federal government. (10) Thus adjustments to the baseline are required to generate a more plausible budget scenario and to develop more meaningful measures of the government's financial situation. (11) One concern is that the baseline assumes that all temporary tax provisions expire as scheduled, even though most have been routinely extended in the past. Traditionally, this concern only applied to a small set of policies--such as tax credits for work opportunity or for research and experimentation--that have existed for years, are narrow in scope, and have relatively minor budget costs, and for which extensions occur as a matter of routine. In recent years, however, the distortion created by assuming that all temporary tax provisions will expire as scheduled has grown dramatically, because all of the provisions of the tax cuts in each of the years 2001 through 2004 are scheduled to expire by the end of the decade. These "temporary" provisions are quite different in nature and scope from the other expiring provisions. Whether they will be extended is a major fiscal policy choice, not a matter of routine. (12)

A second concern is that revenue from the alternative minimum tax (AMT) grows dramatically under the baseline, a development that few observers regard as plausible. (13) Finally, the baseline uses cash-flow accounting, which is appropriate for many programs, but which can distort the financial status of programs whose liabilities increase substantially outside the projection period. (14)

Adjusting for these factors has an enormous impact on the ten-year budget projections. Figure 2 shows that, if the 2001, 2002, and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent, if the other expiring tax provisions are extended, and if the AMT problem is resolved (by indexing the AMT for inflation and allowing dependent exemptions, which would still leave 5 million households paying the AMT in 2014), then the adjusted unified budget deficit would remain at approximately 3.5 percent of GDP over the decade and would be 3.7 percent of GDP (almost $700 billion) in 2014. (15)

One way to gauge the implications of the adjusted unified baseline is to examine the implied ratio of public debt to GDP, as is done in figure 3. Under the adjusted baseline, the debt-GDP ratio would rise steadily throughout the decade and by 2014 would equal 52 percent, well above the most recent high of 49 percent in 1992, and the highest level since 1956. The debt-GDP ratio would continue to rise thereafter.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

The ratio of marketable public debt to GDP tells only part of the long-term budget story, however. Social Security, Medicare part A (the hospital insurance program), and government employee pension programs are projected to run surpluses over the next decade but face shortfalls in the long term. One way to control for these effects is to examine the ten-year horizon while separating the retirement trust funds from the rest of the budget. For example, the bottom line in figure 2 shows that, omitting the retirement trust funds, the rest of the budget would face deficits of 5.1 percent of GDP over the decade (and 5.3 percent of GDP in 2014) under the assumptions above.

An alternative way to incorporate the entitlement programs is to extend the time horizon of the analysis so that future shortfalls are included. To do this, we report estimates of the fiscal gap, defined as the immediate and permanent increase in taxes or reduction in noninterest expenditure that would be required to establish the same debt-GDP ratio in the long run as holds currently. (16) In an article co-written with Alan Auerbach, we estimate that, under adjustments similar to those made in figure 2, the nation faces a long-term fiscal gap in 2004 of 7.2 percent of GDP through 2080 and 10.5 percent of GDP on a permanent basis. (17) Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters have made similar projections, as has the Bush administration. (18)

The main drivers of the fiscal gap, under the above assumptions, are the revenue losses from making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent and the growth in spending for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The recent tax cuts, if extended and not eroded over time by the AMT, would cost roughly 2 percent of GDP over the long term. (19) To help put these figures in context, over the next seventy-five years the actuarial deficit in Social Security is 0.7 percent of GDP under the Social Security trustees' assumptions, and 0.4 percent of GDP under new projections issued by the CBO. (20) The deficit in Medicare part A is 1.4 percent of GDP over the next seventy-five years under the trustees' assumptions. (21) Thus, extending the tax cuts would reduce revenue over the next seventy-five years by an amount about as large as the entire shortfall in the Social Security and Medicare part A trust funds over the same period.

Even if the tax cuts are not made permanent, however, the fiscal gap would be 5.1 percent of GDP through 2080 and 8.2 percent on a permanent basis. A primary reason is substantial projected increases in entitlement costs. Figure 4 shows the projected increases in Social Security, Medicare (this time including not only part A but also part B, supplementary Medicare insurance, and part D, the new prescription drug benefit), and federal Medicaid costs as a share of GDP over the long term. (22) The projected retirement of the baby boomers, ongoing increases in life expectancy, and growth in health care costs per beneficiary in excess of growth in GDP per capita combine to drive federal expenditure on these three programs from 8.1 percent of GDP in 2004 to a projected 10.2 percent by 2015, 13.3 percent by 2025, and 22.7 percent by 2075. (23) Figure 4 also shows that the vast majority of the growth occurs in the health-related programs, not in Social Security. Indeed, after about 2030, Social Security costs are roughly stable relative to GDP. The health-related programs not only are projected to increase in cost much more dramatically than Social Security but are also much more difficult to reform.

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

To be sure, substantial uncertainty surrounds these short- and long-term budget projections. Much of the problem stems from the fact that the surplus or deficit is the difference between two large quantities, revenue and spending. Small percentage errors in either can cause large percentage changes in the difference between them. Furthermore, small differences in growth rates sustained for extended periods can have surprisingly large economic effects. Variations in assumed health care cost inflation, in particular, can have a substantial effect on the projections. (24) Nonetheless, almost all studies that have examined the issue suggest that, even if major sources of uncertainty are accounted for, serious long-term fiscal imbalances will remain. (25)

The Economic Effects of Budget Deficits

We categorize the effects of budget deficits into two types. What we here call the "traditional" effects are those described in terms of changes in the usual macroeconomic aggregates, such as consumption, saving, and investment, resulting from the linkages among them as described in macroeconomics textbooks. The Ricardian view, the small open economy view, and the "conventional" view of deficits all address these kinds of effects. The "nontraditional" effects include the effects of weakened investor confidence in a country's economic leadership due to increased deficits, the possible threshold effect of a sudden change in investor perceptions of the sustainability of a country's deficits, and those effects that go beyond the strictly economic realm, such as the effect of a country's debtor or creditor status on its international power and influence.

Traditional Models

Figure 5 summarizes the three "traditional" views of deficits, at least as they apply to a deficit created by changes in the timing of a lump-sum tax, holding the path of government purchases constant, as described earlier. Under Ricardian equivalence, private saving rises in response to the deficit by the same amount that government saving falls (that is, by the same amount that the deficit rises); national saving is therefore constant, and no further adjustments are required or expected. (26)

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

If private saving rises by less than the full amount that public saving falls, then national saving falls, and further adjustments are required to bring national saving and the sum of domestic and net foreign investment back into balance. (27) If the flow of capital from overseas is infinitely elastic, the entire quantity adjustment occurs through increased capital inflows. In this case net foreign investment declines, but the domestic capital stock remains constant. With no change in the domestic capital stock, domestic output (GDP) is likewise constant. Americans' claims on that output, however, decline because the increased borrowing from abroad must be repaid in the future. In other words, the obligation to repay effectively creates a mortgage against future national income; as a result, future gross national product declines even though gross domestic product is constant. (28) Because the capital inflow in this example is assumed to be infinitely elastic, interest rates do not change. Even so, larger deficits reduce future national income (GNP). We refer to this scenario as the small open economy view.

A third possibility is that the supply of international capital is not infinitely elastic. In this case, if national saving falls in response to an increased budget deficit, the relative price and quantity adjustments are different than under the small open economy model, but the end result--a decline in future national income--remains the same. In the absence of perfect capital mobility, the reduction in national saving implies a shortage of funds to finance investment, given existing interest rates and exchange rates. That imbalance puts upward pressure on interest rates, as firms compete for the limited pool of funds to finance investment. The increase in interest rates serves to reduce domestic investment. In a closed economy, the entire adjustment to the reduction in national saving would occur through reduced domestic investment. In an open economy with imperfect capital mobility, the decline in national saving and the resulting rise in interest rates induce some combination of a decline in domestic investment and a decline in net foreign investment (that is, an increase in capital inflows). These changes must be sufficient to ensure that the change in national investment equals the change in national saving. Following Douglas Elmendorf and Gregory Mankiw, we refer to this scenario as the conventional view. (29)

Nontraditional Effects

Beyond their traditional effects on national saving, future national income, and interest rates, deficits can affect the economy in other ways. For example, increased deficits may cause investors to gradually lose confidence in U.S. economic leadership. As Edwin Truman emphasizes, (30) a substantial fiscal deterioration over the longer term may cause "a loss of confidence in the orientation of US economic policies." Such a loss in confidence could then put upward pressure on domestic interest rates, as investors demand a higher risk premium on dollar-denominated assets. The costs of current account deficits--which are in part induced by large budget deficits--may even extend beyond the economic costs narrowly defined. Benjamin Friedman notes that, "World power and influence have historically accrued to creditor countries. It is not coincidental that America emerged as a world power simultaneously with our transition from a debtor nation ... to a creditor supplying investment capital to the rest of the world." (31)

Both the traditional models and the analysis of nontraditional effects focus on gradual negative effects from reduced national saving. This focus may be too limited, however, in that it ignores the possibility of much more sudden and severe adverse consequences. (32) In particular, the traditional analysis of budget deficits in large advanced economies does not seriously entertain the possibility of explicit default, or of implicit default through high inflation. (33) If market expectations regarding the avoidance of default were to change and investors had difficulty seeing how the policy process could avoid extreme measures, the consequences could be much more sudden and severe than traditional estimates suggest. The role of financial market expectations in this type of scenario is central. One of the principal ways in which such a "hard landing" could be triggered is if investors begin to doubt whether a country will maintain its strong historical commitment to avoiding high inflation in order to reduce the real value of the public debt. As Laurence Ball and Mankiw note,

We can only guess what level of debt will trigger a shift in investor confidence, and about the nature and severity of the effects. Despite the vagueness of fears about hard landings, these fears may be the most important reason for seeking to reduce budget deficits ... as countries increase their debt, they wander into unfamiliar territory in which hard landings may lurk. If policymakers are prudent, they will not take the chance of learning what hard landings in G-7 countries are really like. (34)

Although we do not explicitly incorporate nontraditional effects in our analysis below, they serve as an important reminder of why budget deficits, especially chronic deficits, could exert large adverse effects on U.S. economic performance. Our focus on traditional effects is certainly justifiable in the context of a historical analysis of postwar data from the United States. That does not imply, however, that ignoring such issues is appropriate when examining the likely impacts of future deficits. The nation has never before faced the prospect of deficits that are large, sustained, and indeed likely to grow over many decades.

Preliminary Evidence and Benchmark Calculations

The first part of this section sets up the later analysis of deficits, national saving, and interest rates by providing prima facie evidence of the relationships among them that are consistent with the conventional view but hard to reconcile with the small open economy view or the Ricardian view. The second part then provides some benchmark calculations that give a sense of the magnitudes involved.

A Preliminary Examination of the Data

Figure 6 shows net national saving and net federal government saving as shares of net national product (NNP) since 1950. (35) Federal saving has fluctuated significantly over time, and this variation is visibly correlated with swings in national saving. The correlation is especially apparent in the last two decades. The two series both rise moderately in the mid-1980s, decline from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, rise significantly during the 1990s, and then decline again over the past few years. Over the whole period, a regression of national saving on federal saving (each expressed as a share of NNP) yields a coefficient of 1.02 (t = 7), and an equivalent first-differences regression (regressing changes in the national saving-NNP ratio on changes in the federal saving-NNP ratio) yields a coefficient of 0.86 (t = 9). (36)

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

Figure 7 shows net national saving and net domestic investment since 1950, again as shares of NNP. (37) The two series follow very similar patterns over time. Domestic investment has declined by less than national saving over the past twenty years and has exceeded national saving in every year since the early 1980s. The difference is reflected in chronic current account deficits (not shown) and a substantial decline in the nation's net international investment position. (38) Over the past few years, the decline in national saving has been much sharper than the decline in net domestic investment. Between 1998 and 2003, national saving declined by 6 percent of NNP, with about half of the decline made up by increased capital inflows, and half by reduced net domestic investment. A regression of the net domestic investment-NNP ratio on the net national saving-NNP ratio yields a coefficient of 0.57 (t = 15). When the regression is performed on first differences of the two measures, the coefficient is 0.83 (t = 10). (39)

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

Figure 8 plots annual observations of the projected five-year-ahead real ten-year interest rate on Treasury bonds against the CBO's projections of the unified federal deficit as a share of GDP five years ahead. (40) Figure 9 shows similar observations for real forward long-term rates and projections of the publicly held debt. Both figures show a clear association between projected fiscal policy outcomes and forward long-term real interest rates. A regression of the two series in figure 8 implies that an increase in the projected deficit by 1 percent of GDP is associated with an increase in the forward rate of about 27 basis points (t = 5).

[FIGURES 8-9 OMITTED]

Figures 6 through 9 suggest a very simple story: Increases in current federal budget deficits significantly reduce net national saving. This reduction in national saving is reflected partly in increased borrowing from abroad and partly in reduced net domestic investment. Increases in projected future federal deficits raise long-term interest rates, which explains how reductions in national saving serve to reduce domestic investment. These patterns are consistent with the conventional view, but not with the Ricardian or the small open economy view. A primary goal of the paper is to see how robust these simple relationships are to more formal analysis.

The Magnitude of Conventional Effects in Two Simplified Models

To generate some intuition about the potential magnitudes involved in the conventional approach, we examine the impact of budget deficits in two simplified models. Before turning to these models, however, we must first address a key issue: If fiscal policy does influence interest rates, does it do so through changes in government deficits (what we call the "flow perspective") or through changes in the government debt (the "stock perspective")? According to Eric Engen and Glenn Hubbard, (41) government debt rather than deficits should affect the level of interest rates. However, since many models (including the IS-LM model widely taught to undergraduates) imply that budget deficits affect interest rates, we take a broader view. Throughout this paper we leave open the possibility that either the stock perspective or the flow perspective may be valid. In this section we therefore undertake two related calibration exercises. One focuses on the impact of the deficit in a Solow model of economic growth, and the other on the impact of debt in a highly stylized steady-state exercise.

First, we follow Matthew Shapiro and examine the effects of sustained budget deficits in the context of the Solow growth model. (42) Following Mankiw, (43) we assume that the economy's growth rate (the sum of the rate of population growth and that of output per worker) is equal to 3 percent a year, the depreciation rate is 4 percent a year, and the capital share of output is 30 percent. We also assume that the initial gross national saving rate is 17.5 percent of output. (44) This level for the saving rate could, for example, reflect a private gross saving rate of 20 percent of output and a unified budget deficit of 2.5 percent, which are the values we assume for illustrative purposes. These assumptions generate an initial steady state with a capital-output ratio of 2.5 and a gross marginal product of capital of 12 percent, which are reasonable values for the United States (table 1).

Now assume that the unified budget deficit rises by 1 percent of output on a sustained basis. (45) Suppose that one-quarter of this decline in public saving is offset by an increase in private saving. (46) With this response, private saving rises to 20.25 percent of output, and the national saving rate declines to 16.75 percent. Given the reduction in national saving, output per capita in the new steady state is reduced by 1.9 percent. The marginal product of capital is 54 basis points higher. If we assume that the change in the interest rate at which government borrows is equal to the change in the marginal product of capital, the implication is that the increase in the unified budget deficit raises the interest rate by 54 basis points.

These results provide one way of calibrating the traditional effects of changes in the budget deficit. Under our base case assumptions, holding other factors constant, a sustained increase in the unified deficit of 1 percent of GDP reduces output by about 2 percent and raises interest rates by about 50 basis points. If half of the decline in public saving, rather than one-quarter, is offset by an increase in private saving, long-term output per capita would decline by 1.2 percent and interest rates would rise by 35 basis points. If there is no private saving response, output per capita would fall by 2.5 percent, and the marginal product of capital would rise by 73 basis points. (Table 1 summarizes these results.)

The Solow model exercise underscores the somewhat arbitrary nature of choosing between the stock and flow perspectives described above: In the steady state of the Solow model, deficits and debt are linked, making it difficult to assert that one variable rather than the other is the one that influences interest rates. Nonetheless, since our Solow analysis was presented in terms of the flow variable (the deficit), we also undertake a closely related exercise framed in terms of the stock variable (government debt). In steady state the debt-GDP ratio is equal to the unified deficit-GDP ratio divided by the GDP growth rate. (47) Assuming a 3 percent growth rate as in the Solow model exercise above, an increase in the unified deficit-GDP ratio of 1 percent of GDP would thus raise the steady-state debt-GDP ratio by approximately 33 percentage points.

To map this increase in the debt-GDP ratio into a change in income and interest rates, we follow the basic contours of the "debt fairy" calculation in Ball and Mankiw. (48) First, as in the Solow model above, we assume that the initial steady state for the economy involves a capital-output ratio of 2.5. The change in the ratio depends on how much of the debt increase is offset by increased private capital accumulation; we assume a 25 percent offset. (Because of depreciation, the 25 percent capital offset is a slightly different concept from the 25 percent saving offset assumed in the Solow model, and so the results presented here differ slightly from the Solow model results.) The reduction in capital is thus equal to 25 percent (= 33 x 0.75) of initial GDP. Assuming a marginal product of capital equal to 12 percent, the reduction in the capital stock causes income to decline by about 3 percent. Second, to map the change in the capital-output ratio into a change in the marginal product of capital, a specific form of the aggregate production function is necessary. With a Cobb-Douglas production function, the percentage increase in the marginal product of capital is equal to the percentage decline in the capital-output ratio. The capital-output ratio falls by 7 percent, from 2.50 to 2.32. The marginal product of capital would thus rise by 7 percent, from 12.0 to 12.8. Finally, we again assume that the change in the long-term government borrowing rate is equal to the change in the marginal product of capital. The result is that income declines by 3 percent, and steady-state long-term interest rates increase by about 80 basis points.

Since these two exercises are quite closely related despite their different framing in terms of deficits and debt, it is not surprising that the results are basically similar. A sustained increase in the unified deficit equal to 1 percent of GDP reduces income by 2 to 3 percent and raises long-term interest rates by roughly 50 to 80 basis points under the base case assumptions. (49)

To be sure, it is challenging to move from these simplified models to real-world results. For one thing, the models assume a closed economy, whereas the U.S. economy is large and open. One would therefore expect capital inflows to mitigate the interest rate and domestic production effects to some degree, even though the effect on national income should be largely unaffected by the assumption of a closed economy. In our view, however, these exercises not only help to calibrate the potential magnitude of the effects of deficits and debt on income and interest rates, but also underscore the shortcomings in ruling out the stock (debt) or the flow (deficit) perspective a priori.

Another key consideration is that the results above consider only the effects of increased budget deficits or debt per se. A full analysis of the effects of public policies on economic growth should take into account not only the effects of increased deficits and debt, but also the direct effects of the increases in spending programs or reductions in taxes that cause them. The effects of fiscal policies on both economic performance and interest rates depend not only on the deficit but also on the specific elements of the policies generating that deficit. For example, a dollar spent on public investment projects would increase the unified budget deficit by one dollar, but the net effect on future income would depend on whether the return on those investment projects exceeded the return on the private capital that would have instead been financed by the national saving crowded out by the deficit. Similarly, a deficit of 1 percent of GDP caused by reducing marginal tax rates will generally have different implications for both national income and interest rates than a deficit of 1 percent of GDP caused by increasing government purchases of goods and services. We return to this issue in the concluding section.

Deficits and Consumption

Our goal in this section is to measure the effects of fiscal policy on consumption and thus to distinguish the Ricardian view from the other two views. A wide variety of research tends to reject various indirect implications of Ricardian equivalence. For example, previous studies have generally found that motives for bequests are neither universal nor purely altruistic, that consumer spending responds to temporary tax cuts, that only current and not anticipated changes in income affect consumption (although there is mixed evidence on this point), and that aggregate consumption...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.




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