Incentivos Fiscais: É como o Comunismo.

O título do capítulo recomendado no meu post anterior é Fiscal Policy Works When It Is Tried. Algumas citações relevantes:

Yet the statement is often made that fiscal policy has already been tried and failed in Japan. Claims are made of variously 65 to 75 trillion yen spent in total stimulus efforts since 1991, even before the currently announced package. (...)
The reality of Japanese fiscal policy in the 1990s is less mysterious and, ultimately, more disappointing. The actual amount injected into the economy by the Japanese government—through either public spending or tax reductions—was 23 trillion yen, about a third of the total amount announced.

Respondendo ao Paulo, claro que é arriscado, mas provavelmente nunca foi tão pouco arriscado como agora.

Incentivos fiscais: ou talvez não?

No seu post anterior Gonçalo, encaminha-nos para um post de Krugman (prémio Nobel da Economia pelo seu trabalho em economia de trocas internacionais, ou lá como se traduz isso, e localização de actividade económica). Talvez por mera curiosidade, um muito conceituado macroeconomista, Greg Mankiw, escreveu no mesmo dia um artigo menos optimista sobre o funcionamento dos incetivos fiscais:

For example, here is the conclusion of Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig (a prominent econometrician now at the University of Chicago) in an empirical study called "What are the Effects of Fiscal Policy Shocks?":

Our main results are that

* a surprise deficit-financed tax cut is the best fiscal policy to stimulate the economy
* a deficit[-financed government] spending shock weakly stimulates the economy.
* government spending shocks crowd out both residential and non-residential investment without causing interest rates to rise.

Ou, ainda:

An earlier, related paper by Olivier Blanchard and Roberto Perotti called "An Empirical Characterization Of The Dynamic Effects Of Changes In Government Spending And Taxes On Output" reported similar anomalous results:

we find that both increases in taxes and increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending. This effect is consistent with a neoclassical model with distortionary taxes, but more difficult to reconcile with Keynesian theory: while agnostic about the sign, Keynesian theory predicts opposite effects of tax and spending increases on private investment. This does not appear to be the case.

Como Mankiw frisa, e bem, muito pouco se sabe sobre os ciclos ecónicos e a política económica ideal. Não será um bocado arriscado promover planos de investimento gigantes nestas condições?