What is Golden Rule in Economics?

In modern economics, the Golden Rule is an economic policy that says, a government must only borrow money for investing and not for funding the regular expense. That means a government should borrow money only to invest them for the benefit of the future generation and all the present expenses should be covered by tax revenue.

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Why is the Golden Rule Important for Fiscal Policy?

The term Golden Rule was originally used in some ancient religious writings and the most popular version of it says, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In economic policy, the golden rule is not to burden the future generation with debt. According to the golden rule of fiscal policy, a government is only allowed to borrow money to invest it and not utilize it for the benefit of the current generation. The golden rule has been applied by many countries in their fiscal policy although the nature of application differs from one country to another. In most of the cases, the countries had to make some changes in their constitution in order to apply golden rule completely. However, in all the countries the basic is the government spends less than it earns. The countries that adopted the golden rule policy witnessed a significant reduction in their deficit after applying the rule. Switzerland is one of the countries that adopted the golden rule successfully in formulating their economic policy. As part of the policy, the Swiss government limited their spending to the projected revenue in the financial year. As a result, since 2004 the country has managed to keep its spending growth under 2% per year. The country has also increased its economic output faster than its spending. Germany has also adopted this rule and the countrys spending growth was reduced to below 0.2% from 2003 to 2007. It also enabled to create a budget surplus. New Zealand, Canada, and Sweden have applied this rule and experimented with it from time to time and managed to turn their deficit to surplus. The European Union applied its own version of the golden rule and mandated the nations with debts higher than 55% of GDP to reduce their structural deficit to less than 0.5% of GDP. In the United States, several attempts were made by different lawmakers to apply the golden rule, but none succeeded as the constitution of the United States does not require a balanced budget, nor does it impose any limits on spending. One of the most remarkable efforts to adopt the golden rule was made in 1985 by passing the Gramm-Rudmann-Hollings bill. The bill specified annual deficit targets and if the target is missed; an automatic sequestration process would start. The bill was later ruled out by the Supreme Court of the United States as unconstitutional and it was abandoned. In 1990, under the presidency of President Bill Clinton, the country witnessed budget surpluses due to certain temporary policies including a rise in tax and spending reduction.

Related Topics

• What is Government Spending?
• Autonomous Spending
• Autonomous Consumption
• Fiscal Policy
• Expansionary Fiscal Policy
• Contractionary Fiscal Policy
• Progressive vs Regressive Tax
• Marginal Tax Rates
• Proportional Tax
• Trickle Down Theory
• Discretionary Fiscal Policy
• Automatic Stabilizers
• Effects of Discretionary Policy (Interest Rates & Lags)
• Crowding Out Effect 
• National Debt
• Government Borrowing
• Golden Rule
• Ricardian Equivalence
• Balanced Budget - Deficit and Surplus
• National Debt
• Standardized Employment Budget
• Deficit Hawk
• Austerity
• Twin Deficits
• Fiscal Policy and the Aggregate Supply and Demand Curve
• Stabilization Policy
• Robin Hood Effect
• Ricardo Barro Effect
• Automatic Stabilizers
• Standardized Employment Budget
• How Does Fiscal Policy Affect Interest Rates? 
• Crowding Out
• Types of Lag in Fiscal Policy
• Temporary and Permanent Fiscal Policy
• Limitations of Fiscal Policy?
• How Politics Affects Discretionary Fiscal Policy
• Government Borrowing
• National Savings and Investment Identity
• Debtor Nation
• Fiscal Policy Affects Trade Balances
• Twin Deficits
• Exchange Rates Affect Budget and Trade Deficits
• What are the risks of chronic large deficits in the United States?
• How Fiscal Policy Can Affect Trade Imbalances
• Government Borrowing Affect Private Savings
• Ricardian Equivalence
• Fiscal Policy Affects Investment and Economic Growth
• Crowding Out of Physical Capital Investment?
• How Does Government Borrowing Affect Interest Rates in Financial Markets?
• Government Investment in Physical Capital
• Public Investment in Human Capital
• Fiscal Policy Can Affect Technology Development

• Economic Cycle or Business Cycle
• Business Cycle Indicator
• Peak and Trough
• Recession and Depression
• Hard Landing vs Soft Landing
• Economic Bubble
• Boom and Bust Cycle
• Great Depression
• Baby Boomer Age Wave Theory

• Skyscrapper Effect (Economics)
• V-Shaped Recovery
• W-Shaped Recovery
• U-Shaped Recovery
• Kondratieff Wave Cycle
• Contagion
• Feedback Rule Policy
• American Customer Satisfaction Index
• CNN Effect
• Bureau of Economic Analysis
• Business Starts Index
• American Recover and Reinvestment Act
• Abenomics
• Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
• Commodity Credit Corporation
• Humphrey Hawkins Act

• Real Economic Growth Rate
• Fox-Trot Economy

• Stagnation
• Neoclassical Growth Theory
• Exogenous Growth Theory
• Endogenous Growth Theory
• New Growth Theory - Explained
• Classical Growth Theory - Explained
• Real Economic Growth Rate - Explained
• Plutonomy