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Investigación económica
versión impresa ISSN 0185-1667
Inv. Econ vol.62 no.246 Ciudad de México oct./dic. 2003
Artículos
Chicago, Keynes and Fiscal Policy
Chicago, Keynes y la política fiscal
* Economic Affairs Officer, ECLAC (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago). E-mail: eperezcaldentey@hotmail.com.
During the first half of the 1930's, the founders of the Chicago School of economics and John Maynard Keynes in England advocated public works as a cure for unemployment and a way to overcome the Great Depression. Counter cyclical fiscal policy was seen as a feasible strategy to attenuate the phases of the economic cycle and was advocated on the basis of market rigidities and the impotency of monetary policy.
By the end of the decade both Chicago economists and Keynes had departed from this fiscal policy stance. The former became concerned with the inflationary consequences of expansionary fiscal policies, especially when there was the temptation to implement them pro cyclically. Ultimately, fiscal issues were overshadowed by monetary policy concerns.
Keynes remained an advocate of counter cyclical fiscal policy but recanted from the instruments he had proposed earlier to combat economic fluctuations. Using the framework he developed in the General Theory (1936), he extended the division of income (consumption) and non-income (investment) related categories to the government's budget. Thus, Keynes distinguished between a current (government consumption) and a capital (government investment) budget. The current budget was to be in balance or show a surplus to finance the capital budget, which in turn played the fundamental stabilizing role. This allowed him to advance two different concepts of fiscal policy, capital and deficit budgeting. Capital budgeting, to which he adhered under the assumption of capital scarcity, meant rejecting the short-term stabilization tools associated with deficit budgeting (public works and the use of taxation to alter consumption patterns). Once the capital saturation point was reached fiscal policy could change its focus from investment to consumption and perhaps from capital to deficit budgeting.
En la primera mitad de la década de los años treinta los padres fundadores de la escuela de economía de Chicago y John Maynard Keynes en Inglaterra propusieron la puesta en marcha de trabajos públicos para combatir el desempleo y sobreponerse a la Gran Depresión. Frente a la rigidez de los precios de mercado y la impotencia de la política monetaria, la política fiscal contra cíclica pasó a ser vista como una estrategia viable y capaz de atenuar las fases del ciclo económico.
A finales de la década tanto los economistas de Chicago como Keynes renunciaron al uso de este tipo de incentivos fiscales. Los economistas de Chicago centraron su rechazo en el potencial inflacionario de la política fiscal expansiva y enfocaron sus preocupaciones hacia los aspectos monetarios de la política fiscal.
Por su parte Keynes mantuvo su apoyo a la política fiscal contra cíclica absteniéndose de recomendar los instrumentos que había propuesto anteriormente para combatir las fluctuaciones económicas. Utilizando el marco teórico que desarrolló en la Teoría General (1936), Keynes distinguió entre el presupuesto corriente y el de capital. El presupuesto corriente debía mostrar un equilibrio o un superávit con el fin de financiar el gasto en capital que actuaría como estabilizador del ciclo económico. Keynes distinguió así entre dos conceptos de política fiscal (la política fiscal compensatoria y la política fiscal basada en la programación de los gastos de capital). El segundo tipo de política fiscal, válido bajo la suposición de escasez del factor capital, suponía el rechazo de los instrumentos de estabilización fiscal de corto plazo (trabajos públicos y el uso de los impuestos para alterar los patrones de consumo). Más allá del punto de saturación del capital, la política fiscal podría cambiar su enfásis hacia el consumo y su rol compensatorio.
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Received: August 2002; Accepted: May 2003
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