Fiscal History

Abstract

This paper is based on a presentation to a Symposium, "Well-being, budget responsibility rules and the Public Finance Act", hosted on 15 April 2019 by the Institute of Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, and on a follow-up presentation to the Fabian Society at Conolly Hall Wellington on April 23. It falls into two parts: an examination of trends in public revenue and spending in the post-war years and a suggested re-focusing of the Public Finance Act fiscal policy framework, that includes the possible use of fiat money creation in support of macroeconomic objectives, particularly full employment. The historic analysis updates work undertaken earlier this decade, with the primary objective of deriving annual time series data summarizing trends in public revenue and spending, suitable for use in econometric analysis.