The Tyranny of Budget Forecasts
The evolving federal budget process has placed increasing demands on, and given unique powers to, the economic forecasters at OMB, Treasury, CBO, and the Joint Tax Committee of Congress. On the whole, the forecasters have been highly professional in their work, but differences in estimating techniques and, especially, constraints imposed on their analysis by elected officials have limited their credibility. Both the Administration and Congress "game" the system and even ignore the budget rules when convenient. Thus, a sophisticated budget process can help, but cannot assure, sound fiscal policy in the absence of political will to make hard decisions.
A new measure of fiscal shocks based on budget forecasts and its implications
This paper develops a new measure of US fiscal policy shocks that intends to avoid the anticipation problem affecting conventional measures, being also arguably free from endogeneity. The shocks are intended to capture changes to the component of anticipated fiscal policy that is exogenous to economic developments. Key economic variables such as output and interest rates respond quickly and significantly to a realization of the estimated shock and, in the first part of the sample, 1969-1988, in a way consistent with the Keynesian prior. In contrast, over the period 1989-2008 the effects are at odds with that prior, with fiscal loosening producing contractionary impacts.
Trade, exchange rate, and agricultural pricing policies in Thailand
Thailand is still largely an agricultural country. In 1984, agricultural work was still the main source of earnings for more than 70 percent of the population. For much of the 25 year period covered by this report, government intervention in the prices of rice, maize, and natural rubber was extensive. For these products, intervention took the form of explicit export taxes and restrictive quotas. Sugar, on the other hand, was imported until 1960. For many years prior to that, government policy was to encourage growers and thus achieve self-sufficiency. One conclusion of this study is that the Thai sugar industry would have shrunk dramatically if the government had refrained from intervention. Intervention in the prices of rice and natural rubber had the effect of penalizing farm producers by reducing their output prices. There was, as a consequence a shift of resources towards Thailand's small industrial sector. In 1981, the Thai government lifted its quota restrictions, and liberalized its trade by eliminating its intervention in the maize, rice, sugar and natural rubber markets. Unfortunately for export growers, however, the gradual elimination of intervention was overshadowed by sharp declines in the world prices of Thailand's major agricultural exports.