FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DEFICITS: SOME MYTHS AND REALITIES
从概念和会计角度讨论估算联邦政府赤字面临的困难，指出官方赤字数据存在测量误差和概念问题，影响对消费者预期、货币化等宏观经济问题的分析。
ing from all the difficulties of forecasting, let us focus our attention, despite, perhaps, its looser ties to the future performance of the economy than surprises anticipated future deficits, on what would be involved on a conceptual and accounting basis in estimating the federal government deficit for a recent year. I leave aside all issues about the extent to which we need to worry about measuring the cumulative state and local government surplus, given the wide range of accounting procedures and features employed therein, and refer to R. G. Penner for those who desire further discussions concerning the budgetary process and forecasting. As a brief reminder, however, agency and OMB preliminary budget analyses are conducted approximately at least one year prior to the beginning of the fiscal year under consideration; the president issues his budget message in January; congressional review occurs throughout the balance of the fiscal year under consideration (and sometimes continues into it); the fiscal year commences on October 1 and runs through the following September 30; and auditing of income and expenditures proceeds thereafter. It is not surprising, therefore, that forecasting spending, revenues, and thus the deficit, is a nontrivial statistical matter subject to all sorts of problems. My point is simply that we do not even know what the budget deficit, in any reasonable sense, was in any recent previous year; and that if we cannot know this, it may mean that our econometric analyses of the impact of the budgetary deficit are based on analytically inappropriate concepts, or substantial measurement error; and that a large amount of disagreement concerning the extent to which consumers anticipate future taxes, the Fed monetizes the deficit, and a bevy of other issues at the core of macroeconomic analysis and policy are not being analysed or tested in an appropriate manner. Let us now turn to a discussion of some of the vagaries in estimating the budget deficit for a recent period, for example, last year. Conceptually, if all accounting was done appropriately, the budget deficit D would merely be the difference between the government's income Yg, and outlays 0, as indicated in equation (1), (1) Dt t+ IYgt,t+I-Ogt,t+i where the subscript t denotes the beginning of the period, and t + 1, the end of the period, however long the period under consideration. Problems occur because it is difficult to measure both Y and 0. These problems include classic problems in accrual versus realization accounting; inflation accounting; This content downloaded from 40.77.167.90 on Sat, 06 Aug 2016 05:17:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 298 A EA PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS MA Y 1982 developing appropriate price indices for various categories; valuing a variety of types of services and goods which are not freely traded on well-defined markets, as usual, with public goods types of issues; etc. As with the private sector national income accounts, we have substantial problems in measuring capital gains and losses. Unfortunately, these swings in the change of the federal government's outstanding obligations are quite large in some periods and can dominate or at least equal the regular deficit figures. Further, a large number of government operations during a period, say, between t and t + 1, are explicit or implicit contingent promises to deliver cash or commodities under certain conditions, for example, loan guarantees, insurance, social insurance benefit payments, etc. While I shall return to these points in more detail below, how should one treat accruing implicit forecasted Social Security benefit payments? Or new loan guarantee commitments combined with possible changes in the probabilities that previously issued loan guarantees will have to be paid? Let us return to the original budget deficit estimate and work our way toward a more comprehensive measureincluding large estimated standard errors of estimate-of the federal government deficit, indicating some of the land mines along the way in terms of difficult conceptual issues, data demands, measurement problems, etc. Last year the federal government ran an estimated budgetary deficit of $58 billion. The exact figure will not be known for quite some time, until after auditing occurs. This is the most widely quoted figure, and when discussions of the budget deficit and/or projected deficits are made, they are with reference to the budget deficits. It is important to note that this figure must not only be adjusted for a variety of reasons, but it is not at all comprehensive. First of all, the federal government does not keep a separate capital account; the official budget figures exclude certain items pursuant to the mid1970's budget reform process, for example, so-called off-budget activities and the activities of federally sponsored agencies. Many of these activities involve subsidized lending or loan guarantees. In any event the Treasury must borrow to finance the deficits of these entities. I will return to one or two of these items below. A. Tangible Capital and Investment If we maintained a separate and conceptually correct current and capital account system, the deficit on current account would be the true deficit, although the government would be in a position to change the composition of asset purchases and sales in order to change the net surplus. The basic point is that for capital items, any excess of expenditures over receipts on capital account does not change the net asset position of the government since the new debt is matched by a new government asset. In the capital account, the purchase of assets would be included as expenditures and sales of government assets, and funds transferred from the current account to cover depreciation receipts would be counted as receipts. Depreciation charges on government assets would appear as an expenditure in the current