The geographies of austerity
The geographies of austerity
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紧缩的地理分布
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发表时间：
2011
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
P. Tyler
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作者：
M. Kitson;R. Martin;P. Tyler
直到2007年年中，对大多数观察家来说，全球经济形势看起来还是一片光明。经济规律似乎已经改变：发达经济体摆脱了通货膨胀，商业周期已经消除，稳定增长已经牢固确立。这是一个新的经济时代已经到来的信念，在2003年，英格兰银行行长将过去的十年描述为“非通胀持续扩张”的时期（King，2003）。2007年3月，英国财政大臣戈登·布朗自信地宣布：“我向全国提交的报告是，就业和投资不断增加，通货膨胀率继续保持在低水平，利率和抵押贷款利率保持在低水平。”建立在我国历史上最长时期的经济稳定和持续增长的基础上”（布朗，2007年）。有一种乐观的评估认为，新的经济秩序是由新技术和新的“创造性阶层”推动的，并得到各国财政审慎政策的支持。当然，从国内生产总值（GDP）的稳步上升来看，特别是美国和英国（见图1），这种乐观情绪似乎有充分的理由。当然，我们现在知道的是，这种“长期繁荣”或“大缓和”（Stock and沃森，2002）在很大程度上是建立在一种不可持续的增长模式之上的。支撑这一增长的大部分是家庭债务的急剧上升，在美国和英国，家庭债务超过GDP的100%（图2）。家庭债务的增加是由一场完美风暴推动的：房地产和股票市场的资产价格上涨;来自中国和远东其他地区的廉价商品;中国、日本和石油出口国的储蓄过剩;全球金融体系摆脱了监管，正在开发越来越“创造性”的赚钱方式（部分是通过为家庭抵押贷款债务的上升提供资金和燃料）;以及对“长期繁荣”本身的乐观情绪。简单的过程是，许多发达经济体的消费者可以以低廉的价格借钱消费，由此产生的消费需求增加刺激了经济增长。特别是美国和英国从20世纪90年代初开始经历了快速增长，其中大部分是由消费驱动的。在以前的时期，这一过程受到“国际收支约束”的制约，即消费的增长将增加进口，导致国际收支逆差，这反过来又会导致国际收支逆差。
As late as mid-2007, to most observers, the global economic scene looked rosy. It seemed as though the laws of economics had changed: the advanced economies had rid themselves of inflation, the business cycle had been expunged and stable growth firmly established. Such was the conviction that a new economic era had arrived that in 2003 the Governor of the Bank of England described the previous decade as being NICE—a period of ‘non-inflationary consistent expansion’ (King, 2003). And in March 2007, Gordon Brown, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer confidently announced that ‘‘my report to the country is of rising employment and rising investment, continuing low inflation, and low interest and mortgage rates . built on the foundation of the longest period of economic stability and sustained growth in our country’s history’’ (Brown, 2007). There was an optimistic assessment that the new economic order was being driven by new technology and new ‘creative classes’, supported by policies of financial prudence by states. Certainly, in terms of steadily rising levels of gross domestic product (GDP), especially in the USA and UK (see Figure 1), there appeared to be strong grounds for such optimism. What we now know, of course, is that this ‘long boom’ or ‘great moderation’ (Stock and Watson, 2002) was built in large part on an unsustainable growth model. Underpinning much of that growth was a dramatic rise in household debt, in the case of the USA and UK to over 100% of GDP (Figure 2). The increase in household debt was driven by a perfect storm: asset price inflation in housing and stock markets; cheap goods from China and elsewhere in the Far East; a glut of savings, in China, Japan and the oil exporters; a global financial system, which unleashed from regulation, was developing ever more ‘creative’ ways of making money (partly by funding and fuelling the rising tide of household mortgage debt); and the optimism of the ‘long boom’ itself. The simple process was that consumers in many advanced economies could borrow cheaply to spend, and the resultant increase in consumer demand stimulated economic growth. Both the USA and UK in particular experienced rapid growth from the early-1990s onwards, much of it driven by consumption. In previous periods, such a process was kept in check by the ‘balance of payments constraint’—whereby the growth of consumption would increase imports leading to a balance of payments deficit, which in turn would