A (Un)Pleasant Arithmetic of Fiscal Policy: the Case of Italian Public Debt

Marattin, Luigi; Marzo, Massimiliano Working Paper A (Un)Pleasant Arithmetic of Fiscal Policy: the Case of Italian Public Debt Quaderni - Working Paper DSE, No. 625 Provided in Cooperation with: University of Bologna, Department of Economics Suggested Citation: Marattin, Luigi; Marzo, Massimiliano (2008) : A (Un)Pleasant Arithmetic of Fiscal Policy: the Case of Italian Public Debt, Quaderni - Working Paper DSE, No. 625, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche (DSE), Bologna, https://doi.org/10.6092/unibo/amsacta/4625 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/159466 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ 1 A (Un)Pleasant Arithmetic of Fiscal Policy: the Case of Italian Public Debt Luigi Marattin* Massimiliano Marzo÷ (University of Bologna) (University of Bologna) January 2008 Abstract Using the simple arithmetic of government budget constraint, we perform an analysis on the Italian case, investigating the consequences on the main public finance aggregates of the adoption of a fiscal policy rule responding to past real debt/GDP ratio. Such a rule, firmly grounded in the economic analysis, would allow the reduction of Italy's outstanding stock of debt without requiring the strict adherence to the 3% criterion for deficit/GDP ratio, as prescribed by SGP. We perform a forecasting exercise under five alternative scenarios, analyze the details of a structural debt reduction strategy with alternative yearly step, and finally carry out a counterfactual exercise by applying our proposed rule to the period 1994-2006. JEL classification:E61, E62, H63 Keywords: fiscal consolidation, public debt reduction, fiscal policy. * [email protected] Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche – Strada Maggiore 45Bologna (Italy)- 0039-051-2092647 ÷ massimiliano.[email protected] Facoltà di Economia – P.zza Scaravilli 2 – Bologna (Italy). Tel:0039-051-2098019 2 1. Introduction Since the early Nineties, most western economies had to undertake various processes of fiscal consolidation, aimed at reducing both public debt and deficits and achieve more solid fiscal positions. For EU economies, this path took the form of the run-up to the Euro (pre-1998) and the struggle to comply to the Stability and Growth Pact (before and after the 2005 reform), which governs the necessary coordination of Member States' fiscal policies after the establishment of the European Monetary Union. Episodes of fiscal consolidations have been often studied in the economic literature. In one of the most comprehensive of these studies, Alesina and Perotti (1997) examine a full sample of OECD countries (and then focus on Denmark, Ireland and Italy), and find that adjustments relying on government expenditure cuts had a better chance of being successful and expansionary; on the other hand, if they are based on tax increases and cuts in public investments, tend not to be non-persistent and contractionary. However, the policy debate on the issue is still far from reaching a widespread consensus on the public finance objectives that are most suited to modern economies, and on the strategies to achieve them. There is indeed consensus on the need to reduce debt/GDP ratios, as an excessive accumulation of government liabilities puts upward pressures on interest and inflation rates, crowds-out private spending and employs too many resources to debt service payments; such a requirement is even more binding in a monetary union, in order to prevent spillover effects. Nonetheless, the policy debate still seem to devote the best attention on deficit/GDP ratios: in particular, EMU public finance criteria prevents member states to exceed the 3% ceiling in that respect. The reform of the SGP, in March 2005, confirms this parameter, although emphasizing the importance of the whole debt reduction strategy. This paper carries out a simple but meaningful exercise: based on the simple arithmetic of public finance, we assume the existence of a fiscal policy rule in which fiscal pressure responds to past 3 real debt/GDP ratio; we distinguish between tax revenue not immediately responding to macroeconomic variables ("independent taxation") and tax revenue which is promptly available to policy-makers to be manoeuvred in response to, in our case, accumulation of government liabilities. In this second group we adopt the strict definition of "fiscal pressure", that is the sum of direct and indirect taxation; we chose to put social contributions into independent taxation, since governments tend to manoeuvre this source of revenue mainly in reference to sustainability of pensions systems, rather than macroeconomic stabilization. We calibrate the resulting debt dynamics equation with 2007 data, and perform a number of simulation regarding the evolution of public finance aggregates, under alternative macroeconomic scenarios, for the period 2008-2026. We also carry out a counterfactual exercise, applying our feedback fiscal rule to the period 1994-2006, to analyze what would have happened if the government had followed explicitly a kind of fiscal rule such as the one we propose. The whole analysis is targeted at the italian case, given the outstanding stock of public debt, which make Italy the only nation in Europe (and one of the few in the world) with a debt/GDP ratio above the 100% threshold. The remaining of the paper is organized as follows: section 2 sets the simple framework and the proposed fiscal rule, briefly discussing the related theoretical issues, while section 3 calibrates the model with the latest official data available. Section 4 proceeds with the simulations, divided in three different steps: the short-term evolution of public finance aggregates according to the fiscal policy parameter chosen, the medium-long term evolution under five alternative macroeconomic scenarios, and the discussion on alternative debt reduction strategy (featured by a yearly step of, respectively, 1% and 2%) using our proposed fiscal rule. Section 5 performs a counterfactual exercise, applying our fiscal rule to the period 1994-2006 and comparing actual debt/GDP and deficit / GDP series with simulated ones. Section 6 concludes, discusses some policy implications and possible future extensions. 4 2. The framework:debt/GDP dynamics and fiscal rule The basic dynamic of public debt is: B t 1i t B t−1 P t G t −T t  (1) where: B t,t−1 = stock of nominal public debt i t = nominal interest rate P t G t −T t  = primary deficit in nominal terms Few simple algebraic steps (to be found in the Appendix) leads to the following: btbt−1it−t−gtbt−1Gt−Tt Yt (2) where: b i it,t−1 real public debt/GDP ratio gt = rate of growth of real GDP at time t  t  rate of inflation at time t G t −T t Y t  primary deficit / GDP ratio Rearranging the terms: T t −G t Y t i t − t −g t b t−1 Δb t (3) where Δb t is the desired debt/GDP reduction at the end of time t and it is defined as: Δb t −b t −b t−1  (4) 5 Literature on fiscal policy has always based its considerations on the analysis of government intertemporal budget constraint: B t P t E t ∑ j0   j T tj −G tj  (5) Equation (5) simply states that the stock of real debt at time t must be equal to the current value of future primary surpluses. Different opinions on the nature of that relationship gave rise to two alternative theories of price level determination. In fact, if we interpret (5) as a constraint given the price level P t, it implies that the government is obliged to generate current or future primary surpluses in case it looses control on the evolution of public debt; under this theory, P t is entirely determined by the monetary policy authority, according to the standard prediction of the Quantitative Theory of Money. If, instead, we view (5) as an equilibrium relationship that has to hold under any circumstances, it means that if nominal debt increases, primary surpluses do not necessarily have to change accordingly: adjustment might occur via change in the price level, so to guarantee the fulfilment of the equilibrium relationship. Thus, fiscal indiscipline can cause a movement in P t ; not surprisingly, this simple interpretation gave rise in the 90s to the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (Sims 1994, Cochrane 2001, Woodford 2001 and many others), arguing that price level determination is not necessarily a merely monetary issue. Emphasizing the inflationary pressures implied by accumulation of excessive public debt, the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level is, at least partially, at the heart of the theoretical justifications of the public finance requirements for the European Monetary integration process. As first showed by Leeper 1991, the kind commitment for government, implied by the above considerations, can be achieved by the introduction of a fiscal rule such as: 6 T t T 0 B t−1 P t (6) with 01 being the elasticity of (lump-sum) taxation to the past stock of real public debt, and T 0 being that component of tax revenue which moves independently from debt dynamics. With such a rule, government adjust fiscal pressure so to respond to accumulation of past nominal liabilities deflated at the current price level. In the Leeper's terminology, such a rule depicts a "passive" policy, as the fiscal authority is not free to choose a decision rule that depends on current or expected future variables, but has to passively adjust direct taxes in order to balance the budget, being constrained by the active authority (the monetary policy one) and, in microfounded frameworks, by consumers’ optimization. Under assumption of active monetary policy (responding more than proportionally to an increase in inflation) as it seems widely established in modern economies, Leeper derives the conditions for equilibrium determinacy with regard to the fiscal policy rule, which implies the parameter  lying in the following range:  −1 −1 −1 1 (7) where  is the intertemporal rate of preferences by which consumers discount utility in the next period and that is equal, in dynamic general equilibrium models, to the steady-state real interest rate. As the value commonly accepted in the literature for  ranges from 0.95 to 0.99 (corresponding, respectively, to a real net interest rate ranging from 5.26% to 1.01%), we see that the range of values of  consistent with determinacy is very wide to ensure that with a fiscal rule such as (6), there is no risk of an explosive path for the price level even in the presence of a nominal debt shock, since the feedback 7 rule ensures that the government will modify fiscal pressure so to keep constant the value of real debt. Therefore, this kind of fiscal rule is the one most suited to target a specific strategy of public debt reduction, while preserving price stability. On the basis of this theoretical background, we borrow the above fiscal rule and verify its usage in a debt-reduction strategy based on the Italian case. Equation (6) can be modified so as to account for measures relative to GDP, as we did in (2). T t Y t T 0 Y t B t−1 P t Y t T t Y t T 0 Y t B t−1 P t−1 Y t−1 P t−1 P t Y t−1 Y t T t Y t T 0 Y t b t−1 1 t g t (8) (8) is a fiscal rule which makes the fiscal pressure at time t (measured by the amount of total tax revenue relative to GDP) responding to the past real debt/GDP ratio, deflated by the current inflation rate and real GDP growth. Inserting the fiscal rule (8) into the debt/GDP dynamics (equation 2), we obtain: b t b t−1 G t Y t i t − t −g t b t−1 −T 0 Y t −b t−1 1 t g t  b t G t Y t −T 0 Y t 1i t − t −g t − 1 t g t b t−1 (9) 8 3. Data and calibration In order to calibrate the simple model, we use data from the Nota di aggiornamento al DPEF per gli anni 2008-2011, the main policy paper that Italian government utilizes in order to define the public finance intertemporal framework. Data refer to year 2007. Latest news anticipation about Italy's public finance (to be officially released at the end of march 2008) give better results on 2007; nevertheless, we stick to the latest official news available. Furthermore, we have to consider that our exercise aim at providing some general and useful insights, more than representing a proper forecasting exercise; the analysis can easily be updated along with the release of new data. TABLE 1 debt service / GDP 2007 2006 2007 iB Y 4.82% debt/GDP 2006 2006 B Y 106.8% primary government expenditure /GDP 2007 2007 G Y 44.19% tax revenue / GDP 2007 2007 T Y 46.6% independent taxation / GDP 0 2007 T Y 17.10% euro-wide nominal interest rate ECB t i4% GDP real growth 2007 g 1.9% inflation 2007 π 1.9% Obviously interest rate on government debt does not exactly corresponds to the level of short-term interest rate, which in the euro area is set by the European Central Bank; in order to pin down the effective measure, we divide the debt service by the stock of public debt with respect to the GDP: 15 permanently the response of taxation to debt (  0.30). It is noteworthy that all the scenarios involve, in the long-run, a breaking of the 3% ceiling, even in presence of a (more or less pronounced) debt/GDP reduction. The dynamic of fiscal pressure confirms the above results: FIGURE 4 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024 2026 0.39 0.4 0.41 0.42 0.43 0.44 0.45 0.46 0.47 0.48 base s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 The strong reduction of tax revenue/GDP ratio under scenarios 3 and 5 (those featured by greater debt reduction), is the main responsible for the upraising of deficit. The feedback rule, however, leads to a reduction of fiscal pressure in all cases. Debt service is reduced according to the downturn of debt/GDP ratio. We observe the big difference that an increase (scenario 1) or decrease (scenario 2) of 1% in the ECB interest rate can make for public 16 finance. FIGURE 5 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024 2026 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05 0.055 0.06 base s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 4.2.2. Variable steps of debt/GDP reduction So far we have set different macroeconomic conditions (including the fiscal policy stance) and we have observed how debt reduction proceeds in time. In this section we go the other way round: set different objectives of yearly debt reduction (under the first four scenarios), and see what fiscal policy parameter  is needed in order to achieve that objective. Manipulating equation (9), in fact: T 0 Y t b t−1 1 t g t −G t Y t i t − t −g t b t−1 Δb t i t − t −g t b t−1 Δb t G t Y t −T 0 Y t 1 t g t b t−1 17 with Δ b t being the debt reduction step ( −b t −b t −1  ). We see what happens if the government chooses to adopt a (more or less) drastic strategy of debt reduction, bringing down debt/GDP ratio by a constant amount each year. We only analyze the first three scenarios, as 4 and 5 differ exactly because they fix a new (and given) level for . Here are the results for, respectively, Δb t 1% , which would allow debt/GDP ratio to be below the 100% threshold by 2013, and to reach 97.15% in 2015. FIGURE 6 2008 2010 2012 2014 0.24 0.26 0.28 0.3 0.32 0.34 FI 2008 2010 2012 2014 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 DEFICIT / GDP 2008 2010 2012 2014 0.4 0.45 0.5 TAX REVENUE / GDP 2008 2010 2012 2014 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 DEBT SERVICE / GDP base s1 s2 s3 After the small decrease in 2008, the feedback parameter required to support a 1% yearly reduction of debt/GDP, increases over time, as it has to compensate the reduction in the stock of public debt. A permanent, although gradual, reduction in public expenditure (scenario 3) would allow  to be on a 18 decreasing path, at least until 2011 (at the same time, tax revenue/GDP can also decrease substantially). After an increase in 2008, deficit shows a decreasing path, with an interesting feature: baseline and scenario 3 overlap almost perfectly. In other words, if public expenditure is not permanently decreases, the dynamics of deficit is the same since the higher value of the  parameter compensates; however, as shown in the lower-left panel, tax pressure would be higher. If the debt reduction strategy adopts a 2% step per year, the ratio reaches 89.15% by 2015, and the behaviour of fiscal variables is: FIGURE 7 2008 2010 2012 2014 0.26 0.28 0.3 0.32 0.34 0.36 FI 2008 2010 2012 2014 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 DEFICIT/GDP 2008 2010 2012 2014 0.4 0.45 0.5 TAX REVENUE/GDP 2008 2010 2012 2014 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 DEBT SERVICE/GDP base s1 s2 s3 We can observe the same path as above, with the only difference being the quantitative effects, which are obviously stronger in this case. Tax pressure is the same, since the quicker reduction of debt/GDP ratio is compensated by the higher fiscal parameter. 19 5. A counterfactual application The two previous sections were concerned with predictions on the evolution of fiscal variables under different hypothesis and scenarios, assuming that the government explicitly adopted a fiscal rule such as equation (6). Here we ask ourselves what would have happened if such a fiscal policy rule had been applied in Italy in the last decade. We calibrate equation (9) using data from the time span 1994-2006. First we pin down the implicit parameter  on the basis of the actual debt dynamics occurred in that period; then we obtain simulated debt/GDP and deficit/GDP series, analyzing what would have happened had the government adopted explicitly our fiscal rule, with given and alternative values for the feedback parameter. Here is the table of data: TABLE 4 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 t t G Y 42.9% 41.7% 41.4% 41.3% 41.3% 41.7% T Y 45.1% 45.6% 45.8% 48% 46.5% 46.7% 0 t T Y 18.04% 16.46% 17.93% 18.54% 16.15% 16.21% i 9.65% 9.21% 9.25% 7.64% 6.63% 5.75% t π 3.48% 5.03% 5.28% 2.39% 2.71% 1.57% g 2.2% 2.9% 0.7% 1.9% 1.4% 1.9% iB Y 11.4% 11.5% 11.5% 9.4% 8% 6.7% GTiB Y −+ 9.3% 7.6% 7.1% 2.7% 2.8% 1.7% b∆ -6.7% 0.5% 1.2% 2.5% 4% 1% 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 t t G Y 41.2% 41.8% 41.9% 43.4% 43.3% 43.9% 45.9% 20 T Y 45.8% 45% 44.5% 45.1% 44.6% 44.4% 46.9% 0 t T Y 15.82% 16.11% 16.25% 16.43% 16.65% 16.79% 16.8% i 5.62% 5.84% 5.23% 4.89% 4.89% 4.34% 4.3% t π 2.19% 2.65% 3.06% 2.94% 2.62% 2% 2.2% g 3.6% 1.8% 0.3% 0 1.1% 0 1.9% iB Y 6.5% 6.5% 5.8% 5.3% 5.1% 4.5% 4.58% GTiB Y −+ 1.9% 3.1% 2.9% 3.4% 3.4% 4.1% 4.4% b∆ 4.3% 0.4% 2.6% 4.1% 0.4% -2.6% -0.4% Implicit interest rates have been calculated using the same procedure as in the previous section (i.e. dividing the overall debt service expenditure by the existing stock of public debt). Next we show the figure of the resulting implicit  from 1994 to 2006 (quantitative data to be found in Appendix B): FIGURE 8 21 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28 0.3 0.32 EVOLUTION OF DEBT-SENSITIVITY FROM 1994 TO 2006 YEAR FI Visual inspection of Figure 8 is a good way to assess Italian government's fiscal stance. Sensitivity of (direct and indirect) taxation to real debt/GDP ratio shows an increasing trend over the years, confirming the arising of the need of fiscal consolidation. In particular, we note two peaks: in 19971998, corresponding to the run-up to the Maastricht criteria, and in 2003, with the approaching of the Excessive Deficit Procedure for breaking the Stability and Growth Pact parameter. The following exercises show what the debt and deficit dynamics would have been, had the government adopted, respectively, 0.2637 (the mean over the time span) ,0.28,0.30. Simulated series are compared with the actual ones (quantitative results in Appendix B). FIGURE 9 22 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 0.95 1 1.05 1.1 1.15 1.2 1.25 ALTERNATIVE DEBT TRAJECTORIES FROM 1994 TO 2006 fi=0.2637 fi=0.28 fi=0.30 actual FIGURE 10 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1 ALTERNATIVE DEFICIT TRAJECTORIES FROM 1994 TO 2006 fi=0.2637 fi=0.28 fi=0.30 actual 23 Figure 9 shows that adopting an explicit fiscal rule such as (6) would have ensured a steadier reduction of debt/GDP ratio until 2002, with an uprising henceforth. Nevertheless, final results in 2006 would have been, sensibly, improved only adopting a   0.30 . With the average value ( 0.2637 ), in fact, results would have been worse, whereas with 0.28 the final point would have been pretty much the same. It is noteworthy remember, however, that over the entire time span the distance between the actual and the simulated series is strongly in favour of the latter. Figure 10 shows that if the alternatives debt reductions strategies had been put in place, the corresponding deficit/GDP ratios would have been more often above the 3% ceiling that they had actually been in reality. A further confirmation that the adoption of a fiscal policy rule responding to real debt/GDP ratio can manage to implement a successful reduction strategy without having to "tie the hands" to a given numerical parameter for deficit/GDP. 6. Conclusions After the burst of the "tax and spend" Keynesian bubble, most industrialized economies have been faced with the pressing need of structural adjustment of public finance's imbalances. For European nations, this process was mainly governed by the advancement of the European Union economic integration, and the establishment of the European Monetary Union at the end of the last decade, which required the compliance with strict public finance criteria both before and after the starting of the single currency. In this overall context, Italy's situation has been particularly relevant, as it entered the euro with a debt/GDP ratio twice as much as the average value for admission; after that, reduction strategy has proven to be not as aggressive and determined as needed, in order to establish a credible fiscal consolidation plan. 24 In this paper, we tried to investigate the consequences for Italian public finance of the adoption of a simple fiscal policy rule, in which the "variable" component of tax revenue (that we identify with fiscal pressure) responds to the accumulation of past real debt/GDP ratio, with an elasticity given by the crucial feedback parameter . Our results show that the adoption of such a rule could help simplifying the understanding of the fiscal policy framework, and can be summarized as follows: - from the policy point of view, a significant debt reduction can occur if the feedback response is slightly increased with respect to the recent tendency (up until 0.30 ) or if primary government expenditure is gradually reduced by four percentage points over the next four years. Better results, obviously, are achieved if the two above actions are taken jointly. Deterioration of general macroeconomic conditions (in particular, a rise in debt service) can significantly worsen the scenario. - under given conditions, sustained debt reduction can be achieved also with a deficit/GDP ratio greater than 3% (the SGP parameter). The basic intuition is the following: if the tax revenue is permanently set to respond to public debt, the initial sustained reduction of the latter will cause a reduction of the former. The consequent negative effects on deficit are however partially compensated by the reduction in the debt service, but still prevent deficit/GDP ratio to be permanently reduced. At the same time, fiscal pressure can be set on a decreasing path. - a consistent strategy of yearly one (two) per cent reduction of debt/GDP ratio would allow it to be at 97.15% (89.15%) by 2015, but it would require a constant increase in the feedback parameter . Nonetheless, fiscal pressure would remain steady, and deficit/GDP ratio would be under control. - given all macroeconomic variables, if a fiscal rule such as the one we put forward was adopted in Italy from 1994, debt/GDP reduction would have been steady and smooth, although in the last couple of years more aggressive measure would have been needed. That result could have been achieved even in presence of repeated violation of the 3% ceiling for the deficit/GDP ratio. This paper does not include any structural analysis, nor microfoundations. It is a fairly simple 31 2022 82.14% 3.03% 40.87% -0.68% 3.71% 2023 82.07% 3.05% 40.84% -0.65% 3.70% 2024 82.02% 3.07% 40.82% -0.63% 3.70% 2025 81.99% 3.08% 40.81% -0.62% 3.70% 2026 81.97% 3.09% 40.80% -0.61% 3.70% Table B7 Implicit feedback parameter calculated for 1994-2006 YEAR φ 1994 0.2045 1995 0.2364 1996 0.2450 1997 0.2489 1998 0.2779 1999 0.2587 2000 0.2698 2001 0.2594 2002 0.2826 2003 0.3154 2004 0.2814 2005 0.2647 2006 0.2834 Table B8 Actual and simulated debt/GDP ratios 1994-2006 YEAR 0.2637 B Y φ = 0.28 B Y φ = 0.30 B Y φ = actual B Y 1994 117.77% 116.36% 114.12% 124.8% 1995 115.74% 112.90% 109.10% 124.3% 1996 114.20% 110.23% 105.25% 123.1% 1997 111.91% 107.09% 101.26% 120.6% 1998 111.53% 106.14% 99.78% 116.6% 1999 111.14% 105.33% 98.61% 115.6% 2000 108.63% 102.65% 95.86% 111.3% 2001 108.40% 102.25% 95.35% 110.9% 2002 108.42% 102.11% 95.11% 108.3% 2003 109.73% 103.30% 96.62% 104.2% 2004 109.77% 103.27% 96.45% 103.8% 2005 111.07% 104.45% 96.63% 106.4% 2006 112.31% 105.71% 98.13% 106.8% 32 Table B9 Actual and simulated deficit/GDP ratios 1994-2006 YEAR 0.2637 D Y φ = 0.28 D Y φ = 0.30 D Y φ = actual D Y 1994 6.79% 4.97% 2.73% 9.3% 1995 7.31% 5.77% 4.03% 7.6% 1996 5.38% 4.08% 2.68% 7.1% 1997 2.61% 1.59% 0.52% 2.7% 1998 4.22% 3.45% 2.68% 2.8% 1999 3.48% 2.87% 2.30% 1.7% 2000 3.92% 3.42% 2.96% 1.9% 2001 4.61% 4.17% 3.76% 3.1% 2002 3.66% 3.30% 2.96% 2.9% 2003 4.50% 4.19% 3.90% 3.4% 2004 4.12% 3.81% 3.43% 3.4% 2005 3.50% 3.24% 2.93% 4.1% 2006 5.79% 5.55% 5.46% 4.4% 33