Cycles and trends in U.S. net borrowing flows

Nelson Barbosa-Filho, Codrina Rada, Lance Taylor and Luca Zamparelli

Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 2008, vol. 30, issue 4, 623-648

Abstract: Trend and cyclical patterns of household, business, government, and foreign net borrowing shares of gross domestic product are reviewed using diagrams and covariance decompositions of the identity stating that the sum of the shares equals zero. Household and business net borrowing shares and thereby those sectors' contributions to effective demand are procyclical. Household borrowing over the cycle is led by residential investment. Consumption varies countercyclically, but it is offset by rising taxes as opposed to saving, suggesting that "consumption smoothing" by households as featured in much macro theory is not empirically important. Procyclicality of private net borrowing is countered by a countercyclical government deficit along traditional lines. In terms of trends, "twin" fiscal and foreign deficits appear infrequently, with the household and external deficits being much more closely related. The former is linked to a strong upward trend in health-care spending as a share of disposable income, with a corresponding downward trend in saving after the early 1980s.

Keywords: consumption smoothing; net borrowing; twin deficits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://mesharpe.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=H41N33Q15301557H (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mes:postke:v:30:y:2008:i:4:p:623-648

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MPKE20

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Post Keynesian Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().