tailieunhanh - Macroeconomic theory and policy phần 5

Có một cái gì đó quan trọng là phải quan sát ở đây. Nếu cá nhân sống trong một thế giới 'Friedman (xem Phụ lục ), sau đó họ không quan tâm về thời gian thanh toán thuế, nếu thay đổi trong kết quả thời gian trong đời nghĩa vụ thuế T. | 114 CHAPTER 5. GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND FINANCE FIGURE Individual Choice with Lump-Sum Taxes There is something important to observe here. If individuals live in a Friedman world see Appendix then they do not care about the timing of their tax payments if changes in the timing result in the same lifetime tax obligation T. For example Figure depicts two after-tax endowment profiles that result in the same after-tax wealth endowment B features high current taxes but low future taxes while endowment C features low current taxes but high future taxes . In either case consumer demand remains at point C. On the other hand if individuals live in a Keynesian world . if they are debt constrained then the same conclusion will generally not hold again see Appendix . The importance of this distinction will become apparent shortly. In the meantime we will operate under the assumption that individuals are not debt constrained. The Ricardian Equivalence Theorem In this section we ask two related questions. First how does a cut in taxes affect consumer demand Second does a large government budget deficit pose any sort of problem for the economy These two questions are related because cutting taxes generally implies increasing the deficit at least to the extent that program spending 31 32 is left unaltered. Another way to ask the question being posed here is What are the likely effects of a deficit-financed tax cut Deficit-financed tax cuts are sometimes recommended by policy advisors when the economy is in recession. The reasoning here runs something as fol . THE RICARDIAN EQUIVALENCE THEOREM 115 lows. First we know that increases in consumer demand are often followed by periods of economic expansion. If consumer spending is an increasing function of disposable income . c a b y T as in Appendix then a cut in taxes will increase the disposable income of the household sector leading to an increase in consumer demand and therefore future GDP. Let us .