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Budget Deficits, Tax Rules, and real Interest Rates

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  • Martin Feldstein

Abstract

This paper examines three sources of the fluctuations in real interest rates during the past three decades: changes in budget deficits, changes in tax rules, and changes in monetary policy. The evidence indicates that budget deficits and monetary policy have had a strong influence on the level of long-term interest rates but fails to identify any effect of changes in corporate tax rates and investment incentives. The analysis shows that it is projected future budget deficits rather than the current level of the actual or structural deficit that influence long-term interest rates. Each percentage point increase in the five-year projected ratio of budget deficits to GNP raises the long-term government bond rate by approximately 1.2 percentage points while the ratio of the current deficit to GNP (either actual or structural) has no significa effect. The specific parameter estimates imply that the increase in projected budget deficits was responsible for about two-thirds of the rise in the interest rates between 1977-78 and 1983-84.

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File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1970.pdf
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 1970.

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Date of creation: Jul 1986
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1970
Note: EFG ME PE
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  1. Olivier J. Blanchard, 1984. "Debt, Deficits and Finite Horizons," NBER Working Papers 1389, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Martin Feldstein & Lawrence Summers, 1978. "Inflation, Tax Rules, and the Long Term-Interest Rate," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 9(1), pages 61-110.
  3. Kormendi, Roger C, 1983. "Government Debt, Government Spending, and Private Sector Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(5), pages 994-1010, December.
  4. Martin Feldstein, 1983. "Behavioral Simulation Methods in Tax Policy Analysis," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number feld83-2, May.
  5. B. Douglas Bernheim & John B. Shoven, 1985. "Pension Funding and Saving," NBER Working Papers 1622, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Feldstein, Martin S & Eckstein, Otto, 1970. "The Fundamental Determinants of the Interest Rate," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 52(4), pages 363-75, November.
  7. Barro, Robert J., 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Scholarly Articles 3451399, Harvard University Department of Economics.
  8. Feldstein, Martin S, 1976. "Inflation, Income Taxes, and the Rate of Interest: A Theoretical Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(5), pages 809-20, December.
  9. Feldstein, Martin (ed.), 1983. "Behavioral Simulation Methods in Tax Policy Analysis," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 0, number 9780226240848.
  10. Fumio Hayashi, 1981. "Tobin's Marginal q and Average a : A Neoclassical Interpretation," Discussion Papers 457, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
  11. Frankel, Jeffrey A, 1979. "On the Mark: A Theory of Floating Exchange Rates Based on Real Interest Differentials," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(4), pages 610-22, September.
  12. Evans, Paul, 1985. "Do Large Deficits Produce High Interest Rates?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(1), pages 68-87, March.
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Cited by:

  1. Andrea Terzi, 2007. "WP 2007-4 Fiscal deficits in the U.S. and Europe: Revisiting the link with interest rates," SCEPA working paper series. SCEPA's main areas of research are macroeconomic policy, inequality and poverty, and globalization. 2007-4, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.
  2. Frankel, Jeffrey A., 1987. "international Capital Flows and Domestic Economic Policies," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt1q85b9j6, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
  3. Martin S. Feldstein, 1986. "The Budget Deficit and the Dollar," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1986, Volume 1, pages 355-409 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Panagiotis Petrakis & Emmanuel Papadakis & Nikoleta Daniilopoulou, 2012. "Public Statements on Sovereign Yield Spreads:The Greek Case," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 6(2), pages 5-16, December.
  5. Thomas Laubach, 2010. "Fiscal Policy and Interest Rates: The Role of Sovereign Default Risk," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2010, pages 7-29 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Naeem Akram, 2013. "Empirical examination of debt and growth nexus in South Asian countries," Asia-Pacific Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 20(2), pages 29-52, December.
  7. B. Douglas Bernheim, 1987. "Ricardian Equivalence: An Evaluation of Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 2330, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Gale, William G. & Orszag, Peter R., 2003. "Economic Effects of Sustained Budget Deficits," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 56(3), pages 463-85, September.
  9. Stephanie Kelton, 2011. "Limitations of the Government Budget Constraint: Users vs. Issuers of the Currency," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 58(1), pages 57-66, March.
  10. Martin Feldstein & Joosung Jun, 1986. "The Effects of Tax Rules on Nonresidential Fixed Investment: Some Preliminary Evidence from the 1980s," NBER Working Papers 1857, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Manmohan S. Kumar & Emanuele Baldacci, 2010. "Fiscal Deficits, Public Debt, and Sovereign Bond Yields," IMF Working Papers 10/184, International Monetary Fund.

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