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What Austerity Looks Like Around the World

By Brad Plumer, Washington Post

We’ve noted before that most countries in Europe are engaged in austerity — defined as some mix of spending cuts and tax increases. But what’s the actual mix?

Here’s one helpful graph from the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook. It shows the projected change in the “primary balance” of the world’s wealthiest countries between 2011 and 2013. This is the deficit picture after excluding net interest payments on the debt.

Some countries, like Italy, are now consolidating their budgets primarily through revenue increases. Others, like Spain and Greece, seem to be relying far more heavily on spending cuts:

(A key caveat: These forecasts could prove wrong. The OECD, for instance, seems to project that the United States will improve its primary balance through a balanced mix of spending cuts and tax increases in the next year — appearing to assume that Congress will let all of the various tax cuts expire at the end of 2012, which is far from certain.)

Some economic commentators like Paul Krugman and Martin Wolf have argued that Europe in particular is relying too heavily on austerity, period. They argue that attempts to tighten the budget during an economic slump will only hurt growth, which in turn makes it even harder for these countries to rein in their debt. Indeed, the OECD predicts that Europe’s economy will contract by 0.1 percent this year.

A few conservatives, meanwhile, have suggested that it’s not austerity per se that’s the problem — it’s the type of austerity. In the National Review, Veronique de Rugy argues that many European countries are relying too heavily on tax increases to rein in their deficits. (Per the OECD chart above, this especially describes Austria, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands, though countries like Spain and France have been hiking taxes as well.) She cites a few economists, including Scott Sumner, who argue that spending cuts combined with more stimuli from the central bank is the way to go.

There are not many countries around the world that have pursued this route, however. Sweden stands out as one country that has cut spending a bit while enjoying a big monetary stimulus from the Riksbank. By contrast, there are plenty of euro zone countries that are leaning very heavily on cuts — especially Portugal, Greece, and Ireland — and they’re still in trouble. But none of these countries are getting a big boost from Europe’s central bank, so perhaps that’s the relevant variable here.