Understanding Fiscal Policy (3/3)

You might want to read Monday and Tuesday’s post before you begin in on this one.

In today’s post, we conclude by thinking through the section titled “Making Space While The Sun Shines“

1. I’ve used the analogy of a human body throughout this little series, and I’ll press the point a little further here.
   One major problem that crops up when treating a seriously ill patient is about both the strength and the duration of the dosage. How much should the dose be per day, and for how many days should the patient take the medicine?
2. Similarly, when it comes to fiscal policy, how much is enough? What if you give too little of a push? Then the recovery is anemic. What if you nudge a little bit too much? We’re back in 2011-2014 territory – and please do read The Lost Decade!
3. Which is where this section of the article becomes really important: there is no model, anywhere in the world, that tell you what to do now. That is a strong way to put it, but let me be clear: there is no model anywhere in the world that will tell you what to do now. The cause of this current crisis, the crossroads at which the Indian economy found itself before this crisis, the uncertainty about how this crisis will play out and eventually end, and the uncoordinated global response(s) to this crisis all put together mean that we economists don’t know for sure how much fiscal policy is too much. We don’t know for how long we should keep the fiscal stimulus going. We’re, as it were, flying blind.
4. What Sajjid Chinoy is saying, however, is this: whenever you cross a certain threshold of the vaccination drive, you need to start the process of unwinding the stimulus. That is what this excerpt means:
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   “Counter cyclicality must be symmetrical: supporting activity in times of a shock, but then quickly retreating to create space when vaccinations reach a critical mass and the recovery becomes more entrenched.”
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   Will this actually happen? For India’s sake, let us hope so. Our track record is less than encouraging in this regard.
5. Familiarize yourselves with the great r>g debates. In this decade, they’re going to matter.
6. Familiarize yourselves with the meaning and the importance of the primary deficit.
7. Familiarize yourselves with the what the phrase “dual mandate” means when it comes to monetary policy.
8. Pts. 5 through 8 are hopefully going to be areas that you will cut your teeth on if you join the market as a macroeconomist over the next five years. Hopefully because if we are still on pts. 2-4 until that point of time, this pandemic will obviously still be with us.
9. But if it has gone by then, (god, I hope so!), managing the recovery and its aftermath will the macroeconomic challenge of this decade.