Has Europe Abandoned Growth in Favor of More Austerity?

This spring the need for growth policies to balance austerity was the talk of Brussels, Paris and even Frankfurt, home of the archconservative European Central Bank. But in recent weeks the babble of voices pushing the growth agenda has become more muted. Has the euro zone abandoned the search for growth on grounds of irreconcilable incompatibility with the imperative for austerity?

随着2012年的到来，越来越多的政治和金融领导人认为，削减开支而不采取其他措施的简朴饮食不足以解决欧元区债务危机 —because without measures to boost growth at the same time, cuts would simply send public finances into a deadly spiral of lower growth, lower tax revenue and the need for even more cuts. The growth party reached its high water mark when Mario Draghi, president of the ECB, called in April for a “growth compact.”

要走上许多欧洲左翼政客和几位著名经济学家偏爱的增长之路总是很困难的：凯恩斯主义的方法，即增加政府开支和减税，以财政刺激总体需求。由于这一政策与财政紧缩政策直接相悖，因此在不惊吓债券市场的情况下，最合理的做法就是放松节俭的步伐。

这是部分的方法of François Hollande, touted as the leader of the euro zone growth camp. During the campaign leading up to his election as French president in May, he accepted the need for austerity but called for a compromise — postponing the elimination of France’s fiscal deficit by a year to 2017, and relying more on growth to close that gap than had previous government plans. Mariano Rajoy, who became Spain’s prime minister in December, also tried to ease the pace of retrenchment — shocking the Brussels establishment by unilaterally easing the deficit target from 4.4 to 5.8 percent of gross domestic product without consulting EU economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn, with whom the previous target had been agreed.

然而，后来发生的事件使得即便是这些反对紧缩的温和胜利也变得相当短暂。法国国家审计机构courdescomptes本月警告说，政府需要“前所未有”地削减开支，同时增加税收。Cour总裁Didier Migaud表示：“由于经济形势恶化，预算平衡将比预期更加困难。”。因此，奥朗德面临着比前任尼古拉斯•萨科齐（nicolassarkozy）更严厉的削减开支的压力，而不是更少。

Rajoy was, meanwhile, rapidly forced by nervous bond market reaction to backtrack on his pledge, devising a compromise deficit target of 5.3 percent.

The only option left to growth champions is to pursue a course that combines growth and austerity, rather than choosing one over the other.

This is, in fact, what Draghi had in mind when he espoused the growth compact — arguing that structural reforms, including attempts to boost competitiveness, would aid economic expansion. Structural reforms have the virtue in the eyes of central bankers that they usually cost governments nothing in fiscal terms. Instead they frequently require the heavy expenditure of political capital — which is why, until austerity leaves them no choice, politicians tend instead to prefer the easier option of higher government spending to pump prime the economy.

到目前为止，奥朗德在结构改革方面进展甚微。事实上，一些分析师抱怨说，他宣布的计划让企业更难裁员，是在向相反的方向发展。

然而，拉霍伊在改革方面取得了一些进展。例如，他放开了工资谈判，通过鼓励从全部门的全国性交易转向基于每个企业所能负担得起的公司间安排——这一措施应使政府承担零成本，但应促进无法应对国家工资增长的企业的就业，而不考虑其特殊情况。

But the poster-child for structural reform is Draghi’s home country of Italy — whose achievement of this accolade has been eased by the fact that reform-minded politicians can choose from a staggering variety of indefensible and at times downright barmy restrictive practices.

A bevy of measures implemented by Mario Monti, the technocrat prime minister who came to power last year, includes opening closed professions such as pharmacists and notaries, cuts in red tape for small and mid-sized businesses, and efforts to reduce Italy’s high number of business-related court cases, which eat up management time and create corporate uncertainty.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has calculated that the full range of reforms will increase productivity by between 2 and 3 percent by 2020 — a significant boost to Italy’s GDP and tax revenue.

国际货币基金组织（imf）本月在一份关于意大利的报告中对意大利的变化表示欢迎，赞扬“为放松对服务业的管制，使劳动力市场更加灵活和包容而采取的重要步骤。”，它还警告说，需要采取进一步措施，通过西班牙正在实施的那种工资谈判的权力下放，“使工资与生产力更好地匹配”，并且需要“降低做生意的成本”。

即使经合组织是正确的，意大利仍然可能是一个相对低增长的国家，因为在未来几年意大利努力减轻债务负担时，财政拖累了产出——据国际货币基金组织（imf）估计，今年意大利的债务负担将达到GDP的126%。

The catch is that such policies take a long time to produce beneficial effects. Liberalization will eventually make pharmacists more efficient, by increasing competition — but it could take a generation for enough formerly frustrated pharmacists to enter the profession to make this happen.

Credit Suisse describes Monti’s reforms as “impressive”, but calculates that they will add only 0.7 percentage points to GDP by the end of 2014 — making a marginal difference in the short term to an economy, which shrank by more than that in the first quarter of 2012 alone.

从长远来看，结构性改革可能奏效，但其缺陷在于，它比凯恩斯主义的需求管理更为缓慢。在结构性改革取得经济和财政成果之前，意大利和欧元区其他外围国家的主权市场可能会进一步陷入恐慌。这表明，除了鼓励经济结构的长期变化外，德拉吉还需要准备好用硬现金支持改革政府的债券。