宏观政策“三策合一”新理论框架

A New Theoretical Framework Based on Synthesization of Macroeconomic Policies

主流宏观政策理论以新凯恩斯短期分析框架为核心,旨在使用货币政策、财政政策和宏观审慎政策等稳定政策实现短期经济稳定和金融稳定。在主流宏观政策理论的指导下,全世界范围内数十年来政策实践成绩显著,但2008年国际金融危机之后宏观政策难以有效应对美日欧等主要经济体普遍存在的“结构失衡下的衰退”这一新现象。究其根源,主流宏观政策理论主要应对的是传统衰退,其核心在于短期经济波动问题;而危机之后主要经济体面临的“结构失衡下的衰退”除了短期经济波动问题之外,还包括长期增长动力匮乏和经济结构失衡等问题。尤其是,结构黏性以及多种失衡结构之间的嵌套循环会产生非有效的潜在增速缺口,进而导致经济增速的非合理下降和稳定政策的失效,这使得盯住产出缺口目标的主流宏观政策理论难以应对。重构宏观政策理论框架才能破解这些难题。为此,本文提出了宏观政策“三策合一”新理论框架,将稳定政策、增长政策和结构政策纳入统一的理论框架,消除产出缺口和长期潜在增速缺口,促使实际经济增速、长期潜在增速和最优经济结构下的潜在增速合理增速三者趋于一致,从而实现最优经济结构下的短期平稳运行与长期稳定增长。宏观政策“三策合一”新理论框架具有理论一般性和政策实践普适性,不仅可以较好地解决中国和世界主要经济体所面临的“结构失衡下的衰退”,而且可以尝试作为中国经济学的有机组成部分,为全球宏观经济治理提供中国智慧与中国方案。

Based on the New Keynesian doctrine,the mainstream view on macroeconomic policy advocates active interventions via monetary policy,fiscal policy,and macro-prudential policy to achieve economic and financial stability.The last few decades have witnessed that the New Keynesian doctrine contributes to substantial economic stability in practice across many countries in the world.However,this doctrine has been challenged and criticized since the 2008 financial crisis.Many countries in the world have encountered the long-lasting pressure of economic downturn,displaying a low economic growth rate and a high unemployment rate.Although many policy innovations have been made,including unconventional monetary policy,macro-prudential policy,and various large-scale fiscal policies,the momentum of economic downturn cannot be inhibited.The New Keynesian doctrine cannot address this issue appropriately because the economic recession after the 2008 financial crisis is not in the traditional sense but in a new form which is called“recessions with structural distortions”by the author.In a recession with structural distortions,an economy encounters a long-lasting negative output gap and inflation gap,a persistent slump of potential growth,and prevailing distortions of economic structure.The New Keynesian doctrine’s failure stems from the narrow focus on short-run stabilization and the ignorance of long-run slumps and structural distortions occurred after the financial crisis.Therefore,the New Keynesian doctrine cannot effectively address recessions with structural distortions.In particular,by relying on a conventional lean-against-the-wind policy,long-run slumps and structural distortions may lead to an inefficient potential output gap,unreasonable decline of economic growth,and the short-run stabilization policy’s ineffectiveness.This challenge calls for the joint force of stabilization policy,economic growth policy and economic structural policy.However,in the mainstream theoretical analysis of macroeconomic policy,these three policies are separated.Therefore,the substantial advancement of macroeconomic policies in both theoretical and practical ways is needed.Therefore,this paper proposes a new framework for macroeconomic policy and advocates the synthesization of stabilization policy,economic growth policy,and economic structural policy in order to eliminate the output gap and the potential growth gap jointly so that actual output,potential output,and efficient output can be lined up together,and short-run stabilization and long-run sustainability can be achieved under the optimal economic structure.This new theoretical framework proposes three key points.First,it coordinates the three classes of macroeconomic policies to eliminate the output gap and potential growth gap so that the actual economic growth rate,long-run potential growth rate,and efficient growth rate under the optimal economic structure can converge.Second,it anchors the stabilization policy goal to jointly minimize the short-term output gap and the long-term potential growth gap to achieve economic and financial stability.Third,it corrects structural distortions by economic structural policies to approach the optimal economic structure.To make this framework practically implementable,the author also provides an operational scheme for the synthesization of the stabilization policy,economic growth policy,and economic structural policy.First,the goal of macroeconomic policy should include three dimensions,namely,short-run stabilization,long-run growth,and economic structural balance,to achieve economic and financial stability.Second,the coordination of the three classes of macroeconomic policies should be strengthened so that stabilization policy provides a stable short-run economic environment for the implementation of economic growth policy and structure policy,whereas economic growth policy and structure policy eliminate institutional and structural obstacles to improve the effectiveness of stabilization policy.Third,coordination institutes should be established to undertake the coordination system focusing on policy coordination,design,and evaluation.The new framework is a tentative breakthrough of the mainstream New Keynesian doctrine and a theoretical extraction from the experience of macroeconomic control with Chinese characteristics.This framework provides a solution to macroeconomic control challenges after the 2008 financial crisis.As a part of Chinese Economics,it can also provide Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach for other countries.