紧缩政策可以促进经济复苏吗?——来自欧元区的证据

Can Austerity Policy Promote the Recovery of the Economy?

欧债危机之后,政府债务与经济增长问题受到高度重视。本文提出了一个分析紧缩政策对一国债务水平影响的理论模型,并提出"财政紧缩有效边界曲线"假说,证明了紧缩政策可否降低债务水平的关键在于支出乘数与债务比率倒数的相对大小。之后,文章根据该假说采用情景模拟的方法,分析了紧缩政策对于欧元区和G7国家债务水平的变化情况,发现该理论较好地拟合了欧元区和G7国家的情况,"扩张性财政紧缩论"仅在"财政紧缩有效边界曲线"的"有效区域"成立,在"无效区域"不成立,从而无助于经济复苏。文章最后提出了解决萧条时期高债务问题的政策建议:当前欧元区国家必须立刻放弃紧缩政策,重新采取扩张性财政政策,这样才能最终促进经济复苏,降低债务水平。

The paper presents a hypothesis on the impact of austerity policy on a country's debt level. It establishes a theoretical model to show that whether the austerity policy leads to a lower debt ratio depends on whether the fiscal multiplier is bigger than the reciprocal of the debt ratio. An ' austerity efficient frontier curve' hypothesis is proposed innovatively and is used to analyze how austerity policy affects the debt level of the Eurogroup and the G7. We find that the hypothesis well explains the situation of the Eurogroup. It shows that in a high debt economy,the austerity policy increases the debt ratio due to the large fiscal multiplier.The ' expansionary fiscal consolidations' theory makes sense only in the ' effective area' and thus not applicable to Eurogroup. In conclusion we give suggestions on lowering the high debt ratio,which is,every country should make policies differently according to the specific situation.