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Governments Must Reduce Budget Deficits

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Economic Ideas You Should Forget
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Abstract

One of the most consequential ideas in contemporary economics is that governments must reduce budget deficits—preferably to zero. A strict version recommends banning government borrowing once and for all, whereas a more moderate one aims at a balanced budget over the business cycle, where borrowing is admissible during economic downswings, conditional on commitments to budget surpluses of equal magnitudes during upswings.

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Graff, M. (2017). Governments Must Reduce Budget Deficits. In: Frey, B., Iselin, D. (eds) Economic Ideas You Should Forget. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47458-8_27

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