As has been noted, the Administration’s forecast is about a percentage point higher than CBO’s. This seems like a large economic difference; as I’m teaching econometrics this semester, how does this seem in terms of statistical significance. Figure 1 below summarizes.
Category Archives: budget
Where Did All the Stimulus Go?
By April 2018, the Tax Cut and Jobs Act and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 had been put into law. The CBO projected a bump in GDP growth, relative to counterfactual. (According to the CBO, the TCJA alone should have pushed output 0.6 percentage points above baseline in 2019.) However, the actual record has been fairly plodding, as shown in the below figure.
Why Is the Structural Budget Deficit Blowing Up Since Trump?
The structural, or cyclically adjusted, budget balance has been deteriorating. In accounting terms, what’re the drivers?
When the Textbook Is Right: Implications of the Trump Fiscal/Trade Regime
Today we learned that through March, the Federal budget deficit was 15% larger than the corresponding point in the last fiscal year — as expected given a not particularly stimulative tax cut (so much for tax cuts paying for themselves, as Stephen Moore claimed) and the ending of spending restraints. The dollar remains at elevated levels, as interest rates have risen. The trade deficit, excluding petroleum, continues to deteriorate. As I explained to my macro class today… it’s all textbook (notes).
The Return of Global Imbalances (As Foretold)
Nearly a year ago, I asked Are Global Imbalances a Source of Concern?. At a minimum, we know they’re back. And the IMF certainly thinks so.
Guest Contribution: “An Economic Platform for the Democrats”
Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. An earlier version appeared in Project Syndicate.
The Reagan Tax Cuts and Defense Buildup: Supply-Side Miracle or Keynesian Stimulus?
I keep on hearing about the supply-side miracle associated with the the Reagan era tax cuts. What do changes in estimated potential versus actual output suggest?
Figure 1: Year-on-year growth rate of real GDP (blue), and of potential GDP (red), calculated as 4th differences of logged values. Dashed lines at effective dates for Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and Tax Reform Act of 1986. Source: BEA, CBO.
Twin Deficits Redux? CBO Predicts
From the recent CBO Budget and Economic Outlook, the projected current account and implied cyclically adjusted budget balance.
Figure 1: Structural/cyclically adjusted Federal budget balance (dark blue), and current account balance (dark red), both as a share of GDP. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. CBO projection period shaded gray. Projection of structural budget balance estimated by author using June 2017 estimate, adding in legislative changes reported in CBO (2018). Source: BEA 2017Q4 3rd release, CBO (2018), and author’s calculations.
Data vs. Tax Cut and Budget Balance Mythologies
In the current discourse, there seems to be some amnesia with respect to when tax cuts occurred, why they occurred, and how they affected Federal budget deficits. Here is some data (read comments to this post).
The Budget Deficit Outlook, Post-TCJA and Omnibus Budget
Relative to before.
Source: CBO, Budget and Economic Outlook, April 2018 via Kaplan/NYT.
these estimates include macro feedback effects (i.e., dynamic scoring). So much for tax cuts paying for themselves (if anybody ever really believed that).