IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxford/v26y2010i1p87-116.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fiscal policy, fairness between generations, and national saving

Author

Listed:
  • Ray Barrell
  • Martin Weale

Abstract

We assess fiscal policy from the perspective of fairness between generations and the relationship between this and national saving, in the context where the United Kingdom is one of the lowest saving of all the OECD economies. Cross-section and pooled data suggest that governments are in a position to influence national saving and we set out a simple overlapping generation model to show the effects of national debt, of pay-as-you-benefit systems, and of legacies and movements to land prices as means of effecting transfers between generations. Having shown that governments can influence the distribution of resources between generations we then discuss three notions of fairness between generations: (i) that each cohort should pay its own way; (ii) that a social planner should reallocate resources between generations to achieve an inter-temporal optimum; and (iii) that resources should be reallocated so that generations alive at the same time have similar living standards. In the light of these observations we discuss appropriate responses to a variety of economic shocks and we conclude with implications for policy in the aftermath of the recession. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Ray Barrell & Martin Weale, 2010. "Fiscal policy, fairness between generations, and national saving," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 26(1), pages 87-116, Spring.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:26:y:2010:i:1:p:87-116
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oxrep/grq002
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Justice & the deficit
      by chris dillow in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2010-06-09 16:45:26

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Noemi Pena-Miguel & Javier Corral-Lage & J. Inaki De La Pena Esteban & University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), 2017. "A First Approach to a Public Financial Information System for Social Benefits," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(2A), pages 109-127.
    2. Bernard Gumah & Maxwell A. Aziabah, 2020. "“Our Lives Are Affected by Government Agencies†: Citizens’ Perception Survey as a Measure of Public Service Efficiency in Ghana," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, June.
    3. Duy-Tung Bui, 2018. "Fiscal policy and national saving in emerging Asia: challenge or opportunity?," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 8(2), pages 305-322, August.
    4. Alan J Auerbach, 2011. "Long-term fiscal sustainability in major economies," BIS Working Papers 361, Bank for International Settlements.
    5. Iana Liadze & Ray Barrell & Professor E. Philip Davis, 2010. "Evaluating off-balance sheet exposures in banking crisis determination models," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 357, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    6. Afonso, António & Sousa, Ricardo M., 2011. "What are the effects of fiscal policy on asset markets?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 1871-1890, July.
    7. Paolo Pertile & Veronica Polin & Pietro Rizza & Marzia Romanelli, 2015. "The fiscal disadvantage of young Italians: a new view on consolidation and fairness," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(1), pages 27-51, March.
    8. Dr Martin Weale, 2011. "Generational Accounts for the United Kingdom," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 377, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    9. Laurentiu Dumitru ANDREI & Petre BREZEANU, 2019. "Optimizing the Financial Structure of the State Treasury in Romania," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(2), pages 180-195, June.

    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:oup:oxford:v:26:y:2010:i:1:p:87-116. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/oxrep .

    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.