"Estimulando" o desemprego e o fraco crescimento

I

Os keynesianos, de diferentes matizes, sempre têm sustentado que o Estado tem por obrigação (económica e moral) promover o "pleno emprego" e evitar os efeitos do que designou Keynes designou pelos "animal spirits" dos investidores e consumidores privados. Como? Fazendo crescer a "procura agregada" em alturas de recessão económica através do recurso ao aumento da despesa pública cujo efeito na economia seria amplificado pelo respectivo "multiplicador".

Tal como sucede aqui pelo quintal, Scott Grannis não vai nesta conversa. O gráfico que elaborou, e que reproduzo a seguir

ilustra bem esse, digamos, profundo cepticismo da medicina keynesiana. Escreve Scott Grannis (meus realces):

This chart ... lends support to claims by the anti-Keynesians (of which I am one) that the biggest factor that has worked to slow economic growth in recent years is the huge increase in federal spending. Instead of "stimulating" the economy, enormous increases—in both nominal and relative terms—in federal spending have ended up "stimulating" the unemployment rate more than anything else. The reason? The public sector spends money much less efficiently than the private sector... The vast bulk of government spending these days boils down to transferring money from those who are working and producing the most, to those that are working and producing the least, and that is not a prescription for a strongly growing economy.

II

No final do mês passado foi publicado um estudo do Banco Central Europeu intitulado "Economic Performance And Government Size" da autoria de dois portugueses, António Afonso e João Tovar Jalles. Escrevem eles nas conclusões (páginas 25/26, meus realces):

Our results allow us to draw several conclusions regarding the effects on economic growth of the size of the government: i) there is a significant negative effect of the size of government on growth; ii) institutional quality has a significant positive impact on the level of real GDP per capita; iii) government consumption is consistently detrimental to output growth irrespective of the country sample considered (OECD, emerging and developing countries); iv) moreover, the negative effect of government size on GDP per capita is stronger at lower levels of institutional quality, and the positive effect of institutional quality on GDP per capita is stronger at smaller levels of government size.