Paul Krugman: Cavalier in his use of facts (photo: Halldor Kolbeins)

Paul Krugman is regarded as the world’s most influential economist. Since being awarded the Nobel prize in 2008, he has devoted much of his time to a widely syndicated and much quoted column in the New York Times. If someone is recognised as able to mould beliefs and attitudes, and therefore as highly effective in altering the policy debate, it is important to check whether he respects the evidence. Does Krugman inspect data before launching into print?

On March 23, he was rude about Britain. According to his column, “This Snookered Isle”, our problem is that we live with a “terrible, no-good economic discourse”. More precisely, the policy debate here suffers from “a misleading fixation on budget deficits”, so that “media organisations” routinely present as facts propositions that are “contentious if not just plain wrong”. Articles in British newspapers say that fears of excessive debt are “driving up interest rates”, although — according to Krugman — “zero evidence” can be cited for “such claims”.

By contrast, the United States has, in Krugman’s view, become more enlightened in the past few years. Commentators have moved in a Keynesian direction, abandoning the barbaric view that governments should control their expenditure and limit their deficits. It is clear that Krugman derides the shift towards deficit reduction that began under the Conservatives after they were elected in May 2010. The Cameron government opted for “harsh austerity”, to use a Krugman phrase, even if it “backed off” at some point from the harshest of the medicine. It is also clear that Krugman thinks that the Cameron government has pursued a much tighter fiscal policy than the US under Obama. Indeed, the Anglo-American policy difference has been so marked as to justify the condemnation of our “no-good economic discourse” with its “plain wrong” propositions.

But is it true that in the five years since 2010 the UK’s fiscal policy has been more restrictive than that of the US? The International Monetary Fund prepares statistics on fiscal policy in its 188 member states. It applies the same methodology in all countries, and tries to be an impartial and objective source of information. The usually accepted measure of fiscal policy is the change in the cyclically-adjusted (or “structural”) budget balance. What does the latest IMF database (used for its October 2014 World Economic Outlook) say about the change in the general government structural balance for the UK and the US in the five years from 2011 to 2015?

I give the numbers for the UK first. In 2011 the structural deficit was reduced by 2.4 per cent of GDP, in 2012 by 0.2 per cent and in 2013 by 2.0 per cent. A small increase of 0.3 per cent in 2014 is to be followed by a small reduction of 0.4 per cent in 2015. So overall the government deficit has been curbed, on a so-called “structural” basis, by almost 5 per cent of GDP during the reputed fiscal severity of the Cameron government.