In a fiscal crunch, the first spending cuts hit productive public investments, because governments prefer to protect current – and often inefficient – spending on public-sector jobs and transfer payments to the private sector. As a result, the global recovery remains anemic in most advanced economies (with the partial exception of the US and the UK) and now also in the major emerging countries, where growth has slowed sharply in the last two years.
不幸的是，紧缩的政治经济学导致了次优结果。在财政动荡中，第一批支出削减就来自生产性公共投资，因为政府偏好保护当前——通常效率低下——的公共部门就业和向私人部门的转移支付支出。结果，全球复苏在大部分发达经济体毫无起色（美国和英国勉强算得上例外），目前在新兴国家也是如此，它们的增长在过去两年中显著放缓。