Financial repression

Financial repression refers to "policies that result in savers earning returns below the rate of inflation" in order to allow banks to "provide cheap loans to companies and governments, reducing the burden of repayments". It can be particularly effective at liquidating government debt denominated in domestic currency. It can also lead to a large expansions in debt "to levels evoking comparisons with the excesses that generated Japan’s lost decade and the Asian financial crisis" in 1997.

The term was introduced in 1973 by Stanford economists Edward S. Shaw and Ronald I. McKinnon in order to "disparage growth-inhibiting policies in emerging markets".

Financial repression consists of the following:

These measures allow governments to issue debt at lower interest rates. A low nominal interest rate can reduce debt servicing costs, while negative real interest rates erodes the real value of government debt. Thus, financial repression is most successful in liquidating debts when accompanied by inflation and can be considered a form of taxation, or alternatively a form of debasement.

The size of the financial repression tax for 24 emerging markets from 1974 to 1987. Their results showed that financial repression exceeded 2% of GDP for seven countries, and greater than 3% for five countries. For five countries (India, Mexico, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe) it represented approximately 20% of tax revenue. In the case of Mexico financial repression was 6% of GDP, or 40% of tax revenue.

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