Friday 19 March 2010

A country has a large current account deficit, what policy should be followed?

  1. I think the government should do nothing, because it may be that under a free exchange rate system therefore the currency may face to depreciate. Also if a country has a strong economy it will attract FDI(foreign direct investment0) r loans into the capital account so the current account is balanced.
  2. expenditure switching policies. Because these sort of policies reduce domestic spending on imports also the government can set the tariff or non tariff barriers to protect the domestic business. Also the government can subsidies to domestic producers, If the government recognise how important of exchange rate is helpful, they will set lower exchange rate or lower interest rate to encourage the domestic demand and the number of exports.
  3. Expenditure reducing policies, this is means reduce spending on imports by reducing total spending such as deflationary fiscal policies, also they can set higher tax and spend lower money also deflationary if monetary. on anther hand the government can increase the interest rate which is reduce the demands, because less demand leading less expenditure.

2 comments:

CrisisMaven said...

Go with number one! Anything else will drive state deeper into debt or structurally harm the economy. This "fear of deflation" is just a ruse by central banks to keep inflating the money supply. Deflation does not keep people from spending – they always spend what's necessary. And money NOT "spent" is then saved which means it is credit to someone who invests it for capital goods etc. thus it is again being spent, only not for consumption. Money never lies completely idle to any extent whether there's inflation, deflation, stability or a solar eclipse. For deflation to seriously happen, not only the current extreme credit expansion by the central banks and states (through "quantitative easing", stimulus packages, monetising and then spending national debt etc.) but also the money that was released into the economy PRIOR to the collapse would have to be "mopped up" again. This is nowhere to be seen nor would it be technically possible (confiscation aside) so we will rather see inflation than deflation.

Mica said...

thanks for your explaining!