ABSTRACT
The overwhelming majority of Western economic policy makers and theoreticians considered the oil-price "blackmail" in the wake of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 not as a forced real improvement in the terms of trade of the oil-exporting countries but as a nominal higher-cost effect comparable to across-the-board wage demands by unions. The increase in the budget deficit since 1973–between 1970 and 1972 Austria's credit share of the gross national product had fallen to 0.5 percent annually while from 1973 and 1975 it rose to 4.6 percent—perfected the division of labor between monetary and fiscal policy. The federal government's share of the total tax collection has been declining steadily. This pronounced decline is due only in small part to the federal government's falling share of the tax proceeds. Austria's expansionary, domestic fiscal surplus policy does not conform to Nicholas Kaldor's model of "consumer-led growth" nearly so much as is generally suspected or assumed.
