Fonte: Negócios
A 22 de Outubro avançámos no Negócios os resultados de um artigo publicado pela Comissão Europeia sobre as políticas de austeridade na Europa que continua a dar que falar por evidenciar os custos da austeridade simultânea aplicada entre 2011 e 2013. Um dos desenvolvimentos mais ricos é uma breve troca de argumentos entre o autor (Jan in ‘t Veld) e Simon Wren-Lewis na caixa de comentários do blogue deste último. Com as frases dos autores (em inglês) montamos um frente-a-frente sobre as políticas de austeridade na Zona Euro durante a crise.
Com “Reduções de défice simultâneas penalizam a periferia” e “cortar défice pelo lado da despesa penaliza mais a economia” procurámos sintetizar as principais conclusões de “Fiscal Consolidations and spillovers in the Euro area periphery and core”, publicado pela Comissão Europeia. No essencial, o artigo evidencia duas dimensões da austeridade:
1) No curto prazo os cortes de despesa são mais recessivos que os aumentos de impostos (embora sejam preferíveis no longo prazo) e;
2) Os efeitos de contágio da aplicação de austeridade ao mesmo tempo por toda a Europa foram significativos (podendo explicar até um terço da recessão acumulada em Portugal);
Simon Wren-Lewis, economista na Universidade Oxford e um céptico da estratégia europeia, analisou o artigo há poucos dias para avançar com uma crítica contundente à Comissão Europeia. Jan in ‘t Veld, o autor, respondeu, defendeu o seu trabalho e considerando que Wren-Lewis vai longe demais em algumas das suas conclusões. Eis uma entrevista imaginada com as palavras reais de cada um:
Como é que a Zona Euro deveria ter calibrado a austeridade entre o centro e a periferia?
[Simon] Some fiscal tightening in Greece was inevitable, but if EZ policy makers had taken a much more realistic view about how much debt had to be written off, we could have avoided the current disaster. What ended the EZ crisis was not austerity but OMT: if that had been rolled out in 2010 rather than 2012, other periphery countries could also have adjusted more gradually.
[Jan] The option of postponing consolidations was simply not there for highly indebted countries in the EA, which faced pressure from financial markets, or in some cases had completely lost access to markets. A slower pace of consolidation could have raised general fears of sovereign default and such expectations of default could lead to worse growth outcomes than consolidations per se. It is of course much more difficult to quantify that, but we made an attempt to do this in Roeger and in 't Veld (2013), following the work by Corsetti et al. (2012).
[Simon] Of course fiscal consolidation in Germany and some other core countries was not required at all. If instead we had seen fiscal expansion there, to counter the problem of hitting the ZLB, then the overall impact of fiscal policy on EZ GDP need not have been negative.
[Jan] Country-specific recommendations for Germany stressed the need to boost domestic demand. Specifically, it recommends to use the available scope for increased and more efficient growth-enhancing spending on education and research and calls for continuing efforts to accelerate the expansion of the national and cross-border electricity and gas networks
Quanto custou a austeridade simultânea applica em toda a Zona Euro?
[Simon] That means that over 3 years nearly 10% of Eurozone GDP has been needlessly lost through mistakes in policy. This is not the wild claim of a mad macroeconomist, but what simple analysis backed up by mainstream models tell us.
[Jan] Your claim that “10% of Eurozone GDP has been needlessly lost through mistakes in policy” is of course not the conclusion I reached in my paper. You choose here to cumulate GDP level effects over three years and express it as a % of one year's GDP, but according to the model simulations EA GDP is around 4½ % lower in 2013.
[Simon] The total cost of fiscal consolidation is the cost in all three years, not just 2013. I could have worked out the cost in Euros in each year, and summed, but that would just be a very large number. It seems natural to make sense of this by dividing by annual GDP.
[Jan] Most economists would agree public deficits had to be brought back to lower levels, and the question was never one of principle but one of speed. Should the adjustment be frontloaded, or could it be postponed to later, when hopefully conditions have improved and multipliers may be lower? When you speak of needless mistakes in policy, you would have to be more explicit about the counterfactual of no-consolidation. Allowing deficits to remain high would mean the required adjustment in the future would be larger, and the GDP costs of that later adjustment would depend on what you assume about the multiplier.
[Simon] I acknowledged that some fiscal consolidation would have been required in the periphery. My argument was that it could have been much less, if default in Greece had been sooner and more extensive, and if OMT had been introduced at the same time rather than in 2012. For the Eurozone as a whole, that fiscal contradiction could – and should – have been offset by fiscal expansion in the Eurozone core. So, for the EZ as a whole, fiscal tightening could have been avoided, with the consequence according to QUEST that GDP would be 4.5% higher this year.
Como é que este artigo se relaciona com a linha oficial da Comissão e com o pensamento de Marco Buti (o director-geral dos assuntos económicos e financeiros)?
[Simon] As the disclaimer says, “The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily correspond to those of the European Commission.” A good example of the official line is Buti and Carnot, but this line does not tend to be backed up by model simulations, which I think is revealing.
[Jan] The Commission has always acknowledged that consolidations have negative short term output effects, and that multipliers are larger now than in pre-crisis conditions (…) The Commission has always stressed the need for a differentiated approach, which takes into account both the fiscal space and the current economic situation in member states. Buti and Carnot (2013) also acknowledge that the symmetry of the adjustment is a legitimate concern
[Simon] You are understandably defensive of the Commission’s position. You rightly point out that the Commission has suggested that some fiscal expansion in Germany would be helpful, and your own paper is in a similar spirit. In this sense, our views are not that different in qualitative terms. I just believe fiscal expansion in the EZ core, together with (2), could have been sufficiently large that EZ GDP could be now 4.5% higher. But this quantitative difference might partly reflect the fact that the Commission has to work within what is politically possible, whereas I can ignore these political constraints when I write.
Nota: Tema para outro bom debate sobre as políticas de austeridade lançado por Simon Wren-Lewis é perceber porque razão os políticos cortam no investimento público durante recessões quando deveriam provavelmente fazer o contrário.
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