James Zuccollo • Jul 22, 2015 •
The first reckoning for any Budget is when the Office for Budget Responsibility releases its estimates of the fiscal and economic impact of the measures. The second is when the Chancellor appears in front of the Treasury Select Committee and explains the reasoning behind the Budget. George Osborne’s Summer Budget appearance happened yesterday and shed […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jan 21, 2015 •
Alberto Alesina has returned to the fray with a new paper that shows how tax rises are far more damaging than tax cuts. With a new dataset covering the recessionary years, this is the most up-to-date evidence on fiscal consolidation available. Importantly, they are unable to discern evidence that the ZLB caused the effects of […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jan 15, 2015 •
Last week I discussed the importance of good fiscal rules for sustainability, but the recent mess in the UK has demonstrated how poor rules can inhibit growth. When the Government took office in 2010 it faced a startlingly high deficit. It promised to eliminate that within five years, which happens to be the length of […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jan 10, 2015 •
Before Christmas I wrote a couple of posts on fiscal rules and you might very well be asking why it really matters. The first reason is that the current trajectory of public spending is unsustainable, but not in the sense that the Government means it. Sustainability in public spending should be measured over decades, not […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Dec 28, 2014 •
This post draws upon a blog I wrote for The Reformer. A few days ago I wrote about the lessons that can be drawn from the recent history of the UK’s fiscal rules. This post measures the Government’s new Charter for Fiscal Responsibility against them. The Charter sets out the Government’s fiscal rule and requires […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Dec 27, 2014 •
Earlier this week the UK Government announced its new fiscal rule, which defines the fiscal envelope. For those of you who aren’t British, the deficit exceeded 10% of GDP during the recession and fiscal sustainability has become an important political issue, even for people who aren’t econ junkies! Unfortunately, this new rule is unlikely to […] … Read More
Donal Curtin • Dec 17, 2014 •
I've just spent the morning, with the rest of the usual journo and economist suspects, in Treasury's lock-up for the Half Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update. Though sometimes I wonder why I bother: Bill English's press handout essentially said that the ... Read More
Donal Curtin • Oct 14, 2014 •
I've been engaged in a bit of tweeting to and fro about the rise in New Zealand's government debt in recent years, and what's behind it.The background is that there's been a fair bit of political point-making going on about the large rise in debt on Na... Read More
Donal Curtin • Jun 05, 2014 •
A couple of weeks back I blogged about the Budget, and I mentioned that Bill English had introduced what I think is a new fiscal objective - I'm pretty sure it's new - or at the minimum explicitly restated an existing one, namely "After net debt has go... Read More
Donal Curtin • May 16, 2014 •
It's Budget day, and here I'm going to be concentrating on some of the more important issues that may not get the coverage they should. So I won't be spending much time on the headline policy items, which will be well covered by mainstream media, and i... Read More