The Euro-Area Government Spending Multiplier at the Effective Lower Bound
The Euro-Area Government Spending Multiplier at the Effective Lower Bound

Author: Adalgiso Amendola

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2019-06-28

Total Pages: 58

ISBN-13: 1498322913

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We build a factor-augmented interacted panel vector-autoregressive model of the Euro Area (EA) and estimate it with Bayesian methods to compute government spending multipliers. The multipliers are contingent on the overall monetary policy stance, captured by a shadow monetary policy rate. In the short run (one year), whether the fiscal shock occurs when the economy is at the effective lower bound (ELB) or in normal times does not seem to matter for the size of the multiplier. However, as the time horizon increases, multipliers diverge across the two regimes. In the medium run (three years), the average multiplier is about 1 in normal times and between 1.6 and 2.8 at the ELB, depending on the specification. The difference between the two multipliers is distributed largely away from zero. More generally, the multiplier is inversely correlated with the level of the shadow monetary policy rate. In addition, we verify that EA data lend support to the view that the multiplier is larger in periods of economic slack, and we show that the shadow rate and the state of the business cycle are autonomously correlated with its size. The econometric approach deals with several technical problems highlighted in the empirical macroeconomic literature, including the issues of fiscal foresight and limited information.

Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis
Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis

Author: Alberto Alesina

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-06-25

Total Pages: 596

ISBN-13: 022601844X

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The recent recession has brought fiscal policy back to the forefront, with economists and policy makers struggling to reach a consensus on highly political issues like tax rates and government spending. At the heart of the debate are fiscal multipliers, whose size and sensitivity determine the power of such policies to influence economic growth. Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis focuses on the effects of fiscal stimuli and increased government spending, with contributions that consider the measurement of the multiplier effect and its size. In the face of uncertainty over the sustainability of recent economic policies, further contributions to this volume discuss the merits of alternate means of debt reduction through decreased government spending or increased taxes. A final section examines how the short-term political forces driving fiscal policy might be balanced with aspects of the long-term planning governing monetary policy. A direct intervention in timely debates, Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis offers invaluable insights about various responses to the recent financial crisis.

The Macroeconomic Effects of Public Investment
The Macroeconomic Effects of Public Investment

Author: Mr.Abdul Abiad

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2015-05-04

Total Pages: 26

ISBN-13: 1484361555

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This paper provides new evidence of the macroeconomic effects of public investment in advanced economies. Using public investment forecast errors to identify the causal effect of government investment in a sample of 17 OECD economies since 1985 and model simulations, the paper finds that increased public investment raises output, both in the short term and in the long term, crowds in private investment, and reduces unemployment. Several factors shape the macroeconomic effects of public investment. When there is economic slack and monetary accommodation, demand effects are stronger, and the public-debt-to-GDP ratio may actually decline. Public investment is also more effective in boosting output in countries with higher public investment efficiency and when it is financed by issuing debt.

Monetary Policy Rules
Monetary Policy Rules

Author: John B. Taylor

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 0226791262

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This timely volume presents the latest thinking on the monetary policy rules and seeks to determine just what types of rules and policy guidelines function best. A unique cooperative research effort that allowed contributors to evaluate different policy rules using their own specific approaches, this collection presents their striking findings on the potential response of interest rates to an array of variables, including alterations in the rates of inflation, unemployment, and exchange. Monetary Policy Rules illustrates that simple policy rules are more robust and more efficient than complex rules with multiple variables. A state-of-the-art appraisal of the fundamental issues facing the Federal Reserve Board and other central banks, Monetary Policy Rules is essential reading for economic analysts and policymakers alike.

Hysteresis and Business Cycles
Hysteresis and Business Cycles

Author: Ms.Valerie Cerra

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2020-05-29

Total Pages: 50

ISBN-13: 1513536990

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Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.

The Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy in Stimulating Economic Activity
The Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy in Stimulating Economic Activity

Author: Richard Hemming

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2002-12

Total Pages: 62

ISBN-13:

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This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The focus is on the size of fiscal multipliers, and on the possibility that multipliers can turn negative (i.e., that fiscal contractions can be expansionary). The paper concludes that fiscal multipliers are overwhelmingly positive but small. However, there is some evidence of negative fiscal multipliers.

The Keynesian Multiplier
The Keynesian Multiplier

Author: Claude Gnos

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-05-25

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 1134361939

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The multiplier is a central concept in Keynesian and post-Keynesian economics. It is largely what justifies activist full-employment fiscal policy: an increase in fiscal expenditures contributing to multiple rounds of spending, thereby financing itself. Yet, while a copingstone of post-Keynesian theory, it is not universally accepted by

How Loose, How Tight? A Measure of Monetary and Fiscal Stance for the Euro Area
How Loose, How Tight? A Measure of Monetary and Fiscal Stance for the Euro Area

Author: Nicoletta Batini

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2020-06-05

Total Pages: 75

ISBN-13: 1513546082

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This paper builds a model-based dynamic monetary and fiscal conditions index (DMFCI) and uses it to examine the evolution of the joint stance of monetary and fiscal policies in the euro area (EA) and in its three largest member countries over the period 2007-2018. The index is based on the relative impacts of monetary and fiscal policy on demand using actual and simulated data from rich estimated models featuring also financial intermediaries and long-term government debt. The analysis highlights a short-lived fiscal expansion in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, followed by a quick tightening, with monetary policy left to be the “only game in town” after 2013. Individual countries’ DMFCIs show that national policy stances did not always mirror the evolution of the aggregate stance at the EA level, due to heterogeneity in the fiscal stance.

Law and Macroeconomics
Law and Macroeconomics

Author: Yair Listokin

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-03-11

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0674976053

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A distinguished Yale economist and legal scholar’s argument that law, of all things, has the potential to rescue us from the next economic crisis. After the economic crisis of 2008, private-sector spending took nearly a decade to recover. Yair Listokin thinks we can respond more quickly to the next meltdown by reviving and refashioning a policy approach whose proven success is too rarely acknowledged. Harking back to New Deal regulatory agencies, Listokin proposes that we take seriously law’s ability to function as a macroeconomic tool, capable of stimulating demand when needed and relieving demand when it threatens to overheat economies. Listokin makes his case by looking at both positive and cautionary examples, going back to the New Deal and including the Keystone Pipeline, the constitutionally fraught bond-buying program unveiled by the European Central Bank at the nadir of the Eurozone crisis, the ongoing Greek crisis, and the experience of U.S. price controls in the 1970s. History has taught us that law is an unwieldy instrument of macroeconomic policy, but Listokin argues that under certain conditions it offers a vital alternative to the monetary and fiscal policy tools that stretch the legitimacy of technocratic central banks near their breaking point while leaving the rest of us waiting and wallowing.

What Have We Learned?
What Have We Learned?

Author: George A. Akerlof

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-05-09

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0262027348

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Top economists consider how to conduct policy in a world where previous beliefs have been shattered by the recent financial and economic crises. Since 2008, economic policymakers and researchers have occupied a brave new economic world. Previous consensuses have been upended, former assumptions have been cast into doubt, and new approaches have yet to stand the test of time. Policymakers have been forced to improvise and researchers to rethink basic theory. George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate and one of this volume's editors, compares the crisis to a cat stuck in a tree, afraid to move. In April 2013, the International Monetary Fund brought together leading economists and economic policymakers to discuss the slowly emerging contours of the macroeconomic future. This book offers their combined insights. The editors and contributors—who include the Nobel Laureate and bestselling author Joseph Stiglitz, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen, and the former Governor of the Bank of Israel Stanley Fischer—consider the lessons learned from the crisis and its aftermath. They discuss, among other things, post-crisis questions about the traditional policy focus on inflation; macroprudential tools (which focus on the stability of the entire financial system rather than of individual firms) and their effectiveness; fiscal stimulus, public debt, and fiscal consolidation; and exchange rate arrangements.