As Hamlet remarks, "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" and the macroeconomic assessment of Budget 2001 will be judged on thoughts about the appropriateness of the tax cuts it contained. Budget 2001 in my view has delivered a strong stimulatory boost to the economy. The decisions on direct taxes and welfare increases alone will provide a £2.1 billion (€2.7 billion) impulse next year. This is in addition to the substantial increases in current public expenditure already provided for in the Estimates. Given the near full employment conditions prevailing, the combination of the direct tax reductions and the employment generating public expenditure increases announced are likely to push wage rates up by over three percentage points. This is because they will increase the demand for labour in the economy, but may not do much to increase its supply.
The feed-through into consumer prices by this labour market channel is more modest. It is likely to be 0.4 percentage points in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in the first year, rising to 1.2 percentage points within three years. These inflationary impulses would be modified if the tax cuts lead to greater labour force participation. But the responsiveness of labour supply to last year's tax cuts would seem to have been very modest on the basis of the sharp slowdown in labour force growth revealed by the latest Central Statistics Office figures. The reduction in indirect taxes announced is likely to knock about a percentage point off the CPI. While this reduction in indirect taxes has other benefits to recommend it, it must be seen as a one-off manipulation of the measure of inflation rather than a means of controlling the underlying problem.
While the Budget has much to recommend it in the detail, at the aggregate it looks to be overly stimulatory for the current circumstances of the economy.
Danny McCoy is an economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute