Happy News from the Dismal Science: Reassessing the Japanese Fiscal Policy and Sustainability
Happy News from the Dismal Science: Reassessing the Japanese Fiscal Policy and Sustainability
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来自沉闷科学的好消息：重新评估日本财政政策和可持续性
DOI：
10.7916/d81z4bxr
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发表时间：
2004
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
David E. Weinstein
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Christian M. Broda;David E. Weinstein
我们使用 Blanchard (1990) 开发的方法的变体来分析日本的财政政策和财政可持续性。我们发现，日本可以在 100 年的时间内实现财政可持续性，而税收与 GDP 比率的变化相对较小。我们的分析在几个方面与更为悲观的分析不同。首先，由于日本的净债务仅为总债务的一半，我们证明当前的债务负担远低于通常报告的水平。这意味着债务货币化对日本财政可持续性影响不大，因为日本的问题在于未来负债水平而不是当前负债水平。其次，我们认为，基于日本人口正处于灭绝趋势而不是过渡到新的较低水平的标准假设，人们对社会保障负担做出了截然不同的预测。第三，我们证明，对实际人均福利增长率进行适度的成本控制，例如针对人口减少而削减支出，可以大大降低必要的税收负担。总而言之，任何情况下日本的税收都不会高于当今欧洲的水平，而且许多情况都会导致税收与国内生产总值的比率与美国相当。
We analyze fiscal policy and fiscal sustainability in Japan using a variant of the methodology developed in Blanchard (1990). We find that Japan can achieve fiscal sustainability over a 100-year horizon with relatively small changes in the tax-to-GDP ratio. Our analysis differs from more pessimistic analyses in several dimensions. First, since Japanese net debt is only half that of gross debt, we demonstrate that the current debt burden is much lower than is typically reported. This means that monetization of the debt will have little impact on Japan's fiscal sustainability because Japan's problem is the level of future liabilities not current ones. Second, we argue that one obtains very different projections of social security burdens based on the standard assumption that Japan's population is on a trend towards extinction rather than transitioning to a new lower level. Third, we demonstrate that some modest cost containment of the growth rate of real per capita benefits, such as cutting expenditures for shrinking demographic categories, can dramatically lower the necessary tax burden. In sum, no scenario involves Japanese taxes rising above those in Europe today and many result in tax-to-GDP ratios comparable to those in the United States.