IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/coecpo/v7y1989i4p91-115.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are The Twin Deficits Really Related?

Author

Listed:
  • STEPHEN M. MILLER
  • FRANK S. RUSSEK

Abstract

The emergence of record current‐account and fiscal deficits in the United States during the 1980s draws increasing attention to what has become known as the “twin deficit” problem. Conventional wisdom is that a shift to larger government deficits entails a decline in government saving and results in larger trade deficits, Persistently large trade deficits are troublesome because they imply a transfer of wealth to foreigners and possibly a reduction in future generations' living standards. This paper examines whether post‐World War II data for the United States reveal a long‐run secular relationship between the trade deficit and the fiscal deficit. The focus is on the secular relationship since that is the one most relevant to long‐run policy concerns. The authors employ three different statistical techniques: (i) a deterministic technique for separating the secular components from the cyclical components to derive secular measures of the twin deficits, (ii) a stochastic procedure to isolate the secular components, (Hi) cointegration analysis to test for a long‐run equilibrium relationship. The authors conclude that, based on the first two approaches, evidence of a positive secular relationship between the twin deficits exists only under flexible exchange rates. This relationship appears quite strong–that is, a $1 change in the fiscal deficit eventually leads to roughly a $1 change in the trade deficit. On the other hand, findings based on cointegration analysis indicate no long‐run equilibrium relationship between the twin deficits. This latter finding, however, may reflect a low power of the relevant statistical tests stemming from the shortness of the sample period.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen M. Miller & Frank S. Russek, 1989. "Are The Twin Deficits Really Related?," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 7(4), pages 91-115, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:7:y:1989:i:4:p:91-115
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00577.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00577.x
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00577.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Beveridge, Stephen & Nelson, Charles R., 1981. "A new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the `business cycle'," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 151-174.
    2. Robert Engle & Clive Granger, 2015. "Co-integration and error correction: Representation, estimation, and testing," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 39(3), pages 106-135.
    3. Martin Feldstein, 1991. "Domestic Saving and International Capital Movements in the Long Run and the Short Run," NBER Chapters, in: International Volatility and Economic Growth: The First Ten Years of The International Seminar on Macroeconomics, pages 331-353, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Lawrence H. Summers, 1988. "Tax Policy and International Competitiveness," NBER Chapters, in: International Aspects of Fiscal Policies, pages 349-386, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    6. Plosser, Charles I. & Schwert*, G. William, 1978. "Money, income, and sunspots: Measuring economic relationships and the effects of differencing," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 637-660, November.
    7. Watson, Mark W., 1986. "Univariate detrending methods with stochastic trends," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 49-75, July.
    8. Peter K. Clark, 1987. "The Cyclical Component of U. S. Economic Activity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(4), pages 797-814.
    9. Evans, Paul, 1986. "Is the dollar high because of large budget deficits?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 227-249, November.
    10. Engle, Robert F. & Yoo, Byung Sam, 1987. "Forecasting and testing in co-integrated systems," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 143-159, May.
    11. Jacob A. Frenkel & Assaf Razin, 1987. "The Mundell-Fleming Model a Quarter Century Later: A Unified Exposition," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 34(4), pages 567-620, December.
    12. Miller, Stephen M., 1988. "The Beveridge-Nelson decomposition of economic time series : Another economical computational method," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 141-142, January.
    13. Granger, C. W. J. & Newbold, P., 1974. "Spurious regressions in econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 111-120, July.
    14. Benjamin M. Friedman, 1987. "New Directions in the Relationship Between Public and Private Debt," NBER Working Papers 2186, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Ribe, Frederick C & Beeman, William J, 1986. "The Monetary-Fiscal Mix and Long-run Growth in an Open Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 209-212, May.
    16. David, Paul A & Scadding, John L, 1974. "Private Savings: Ultrarationality, Aggregation, and "Denison's Law."," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 225-249, Part I, M.
    17. James R. Barth & George Iden & Frank S. Russek, 1984. "Do Federal Deficits Really Matter?," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 3(1), pages 79-95, September.
    18. de Leeuw, Frank & Holloway, Thomas M, 1985. "The Measurement and Significance of the Cyclically Adjusted Federal Budget and Debt," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 17(2), pages 232-242, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John Y. Campbell & Pierre Perron, 1991. "Pitfalls and Opportunities: What Macroeconomists Should Know about Unit Roots," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1991, Volume 6, pages 141-220, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Chae-Deug Yi, 2003. "An Empirical Analysis of Ricardian Equivalence on Real Exchange Rate and Current Account: Korea," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 61-83.
    3. Cribari-Neto, Francisco, 1996. "On time series econometrics," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(Supplemen), pages 37-60.
    4. Brittle, Shane, 2009. "Ricardian Equivalence and the Efficacy of Fiscal Policy in Australia," Economics Working Papers wp09-10, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    5. Myroslav Pidkuyko, 2014. "Dynamics of Consumption and Dividends over the Business Cycle," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp522, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    6. Willie Lahari, 2011. "Assessing Business Cycle Synchronisation - Prospects for a Pacific Islands Currency Union," Working Papers 1110, University of Otago, Department of Economics, revised Oct 2011.
    7. Pierre Perron, 1992. "Racines unitaires en macroéconomie : le cas d’une variable," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 68(1), pages 325-356.
    8. Kum Hwa Oh & Eric Zivot & Drew Creal, 2006. "The Relationship between the Beveridge-Nelson Decomposition andUnobserved Component Models with Correlated Shocks," Working Papers UWEC-2006-16-FC, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
    9. Bilgili, Faik & Tülüce, Nadide Sevil Halıcı & Doğan, İbrahim, 2012. "The determinants of FDI in Turkey: A Markov Regime-Switching approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 1161-1169.
    10. Stephen M. Miller & Frank S. Russek, 1991. "The Temporal Causality Between Fiscal Deficits And Interest Rates," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 9(3), pages 12-23, July.
    11. Norman J. Morin, 2006. "Likelihood ratio tests on cointegrating vectors, disequilibrium adjustment vectors, and their orthogonal complements," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2006-21, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    12. Hossain, Ferdaus, 1995. "Current account determination in the intertemporal framework: an empirical analysis," ISU General Staff Papers 1995010108000011939, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    13. Bennett T. McCallum, 1993. "Unit roots in macroeconomic time series: some critical issues," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 13-44.
    14. Akdi, Yilmaz & Varlik, Serdar & Berument, M. Hakan, 2020. "Duration of Global Financial Cycles," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 549(C).
    15. Everts, Martin, 2006. "Duration of Business Cycles," MPRA Paper 1219, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Yýlmaz Akdi & Serdar Varlik & Hakan Berument, 2018. "Cycle Duration in Production with Periodicity – Evidence from Turkey," International Econometric Review (IER), Econometric Research Association, vol. 10(2), pages 24-32, September.
    17. Grant, Angelia L. & Chan, Joshua C.C., 2017. "Reconciling output gaps: Unobserved components model and Hodrick–Prescott filter," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 114-121.
    18. Daniel Levy, 1995. "Investment-saving comovement under endogenous fiscal policy," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 237-254, July.
    19. Richard H. Clarida & Mark P. Taylor, 2003. "Nonlinear Permanent - Temporary Decompositions in Macroeconomics and Finance," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(486), pages 125-139, March.
    20. Robert Dixon & G.C. Lim, 2004. "Underlying Inflation in Australia: Are the Existing Measures Satisfactory?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 80(251), pages 373-386, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:7:y:1989:i:4:p:91-115. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.