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MOST people, among them the tens of thousands of workers who rallied in Brussels on September 29th, believe that fiscal austerity leads to a shrinking economy, at least in the short run. Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, disagrees. In June he said that “the idea that austerity measures could trigger stagnation is incorrect.” Arguing that a credible fiscal-consolidation plan would restore confidence, he said: “I firmly believe that in the current circumstances, confidence-inspiring policies will foster and not hamper economic recovery.”多数人，包括9月29日在布鲁塞尔集会的数万名工人，认为财政紧缩导致经济萎缩，至少在短期内是这样的。欧洲央行行长特里谢不同意这种观点。6月，他说“紧缩措施引发经济停滞的说法是不正确的”。他认为一个可靠的财政整顿计划可以重建信心，他说道，“我坚决认为在当前这种形势下，鼓舞信心的政策会促进而不是阻碍经济复苏。”With rich-world budget deficits averaging about 9% of GDP in 2009—up from only 1% in 2007—and their average public-debt-to-GDP ratio expected to hit 100% by the end of this year, austerity is a bullet that few rich countries will be able to dodge. But is it right to claim, as Mr Trichet and other devotees of “expansionary fiscal consolidations” do, that belt-tightening can actually aid growth in the short term? The intellectual backing for these claims comes from a study by two Harvard economists, Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, which studied past fiscal adjustments in rich countries*. They found that, more often than not, fiscal adjustments that relied on spending cuts boosted growth, even in the very short run. But a new study by economists at the IMF reckons that the Harvard study was seriously flawed**.由于2009年发达国家的预算赤字平均达到 GDP的9%，比2007年的区区1%大幅上升，而且他们的公债与GDP比率的平均值也预计在今年年底达到100%，几乎没有任何发达国家能躲开紧缩这颗子弹。但是，如特里谢先生和其他“扩张性的财政整顿”的信徒所言的那样，紧缩实际上在短期内促进增长吗？哈佛的两位经济学家Alberto Alesina 和 Silvia Ardagna的研究支持这种说法，他们研究了过去发达国家的财政调整措施，发现依赖于削减开支的财政调整通常促进了经济增长，即使是在很短的时期内。但是IMF经济学家们的一份新研究则认为，哈佛的研究有严重缺陷。Austerity can have some short-term benefits. Imagine, for example, that consumer demand is depressed in part because people fear the prospect of a wrenching fiscal adjustment. Dev