Category: Fiscal Policy

Shares of Public Expenditure

The lead editorial in today’s Sunday Times (not on the web) states

Many in Fine Gael believe it is almost impossible to judiciously — and fairly — cut €2.2 billion from spending if 70% of the total, in the shape of public-sector pay, is protected from further reduction.

Now I know that the Irish government is pretty hopeless at presenting its fiscal accounts but it’s really not too hard to find out the true figures on the shares of expenditure taken up by pay and other elements.

Go to page 49 of this document which we have to send to Brussels on a regular basis and which uses the perfectly sensible approach of reporting all of the government’s spending and revenue, rather than specific sub-components picked out according to some unintelligible criteria. The shares of public expenditure for major categories this year are as follows:

Pay and pensions = 25.5%
Social payments = 37.8%
Intermediate consumption = 11.4%
Interest payments = 8.4%
Capital formation = 6.4%
Other (including subsidies) = 10.5%

So not 70%. Closer to one-third of that figure. And, as I’ve dicussed before, when income taxes paid by public sector workers are factored in, the net cost is significantly less.

I have stated repeatedly that I think further cuts in public sector pay rates are required. However, it is hard to see how any reasonable debate on this issue can be had when so many of our media outlets hopelessly misrepresent the basic facts at hand.

A Euro Proposal: ECB-Funded, IMF Bailout Bonds

Colm McCarthy and many other commentators want the ECB to print euros to whatever extent is necessary in order to keep essentially-solvent Euro states from being unable to finance their deficits. Colm argues that this ECB-provided unlimited funding back-up can prevent an inefficient coordination-game outcome in which investors flee Euro bond markets … because other investors are doing likewise. Once the unshakeable resolve and money-printing firepower of the ECB is demonstrated clearly, the Euro crisis will diminish, in Colm’s view. Many other commentators, e.g, Gavyn Davies, Mervyn King, numerous Germans, argue that this money-printing solution will just generate an indirect subsidy of wasteful Euro governments by prudent ones, with Euro-wide inflation or eventual ECB capital losses serving as the income-transfer mechanism.
There is some talk in today’s papers of a Eurobond system linked to closer EU control over national finances. The EU’s record for governance of this type of national fiscal oversight is not good, and the core nations are rightly sceptical.
Why not a combination policy? The IMF agrees to run sovereign bailout programmes for any Euro countries as needed, with funding provided via IMF-issued, ECB-purchased bonds. The ECB gets a decent, non-exorbitant yield on all new Euros issued, and the IMF has access to an unlimited supply of Euro funding as needed. The guarantee from the IMF-ECB that Italy, Spain and France could be brought within this bailout process as needed, with no funding limits, would probably eliminate the need to bail them out at all (via the same “good equilibrium” mechanism that Colm suggests). To make it credible this programme would need to be ready to activate as needed without exception. Recalcitrant Euro governments who failed IMF programme criteria would be booted from their bailout programmes in the normal way.

Green growth

Sean and I have an article on green growth at Vox. It builds on a paper recently published in the Energy Journal. Research funded by the EPA.

Public Capital Programme

Here is a link to the new infrastructure and capital investment programme. There is a lot in there so it will take a little time to digest it.

Some quick points:

– There is a commitment to the National Children’s Hospital;

– There is funding for new schools;

– Luas BXD to go ahead (Metro North and DART Interconnector shelved, Metro West was shelved some time ago);

– the A5 project in Northern Ireland (80 km from the border to Derry) has now also been shelved (in addition to the shelving of 45 other national roads projects announced some time ago);

There is no Laffer curve in tourism

The Sunday Times reported on a recent paper by Niamh Callaghan and me.

The paper is on the demand for tourism in Ireland by UK visitors. This is relevant because UK tourists make up about 45% of all visitors to Ireland (and because UK tourists are not that different from other tourists).

The paper starts with descriptive statistics. Irish tourism prices have developed roughly in line with prices elsewhere, except in 2008, when Irish prices rose very sharply, and in 2009, when Irish prices fell as the rest of the world raised their prices.

Ireland roughly maintained its market share in UK tourism. The drop in visitor numbers in Ireland seems to be because people take fewer holidays during a recession, rather than because there is something wrong with Ireland as a tourist destination. Ireland does well in the market for secondary holidays (city visits, fishing trips etc) and people economize on that rather than on the main family holiday.

We then estimate the price elasticity of UK tourism demand — that is, the price elasticity across destinations — using twelve years of micro-data from the International Passengers Survey. We use that to run two simulations, abolishing the travel tax and reverting the VAT cut. The results are qualitatively the same for both scenarios. The tax changes have a small impact on the total cost of the trip. With a price elasticity smaller than one, the impact on visitor numbers is small too. Tax cuts bring additional visitors and additional revenue, but all tourists (including those that would have come anyway) pay less tax. The latter effect is larger, so that there is a net loss to the Irish economy.

Tourism tax breaks are like export subsidies. Foreigners benefit. The tourism sector benefits. The overall economy loses out.