Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xfwgj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-01T20:28:09.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Public Consumption Multipliers in Slack and Good Periods: Evidence From the Euro Area

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2022

Marco Amendola*
Affiliation:
Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy

Abstract

The paper estimates public consumption multipliers and whether they vary depending on the slack of the economy. To this aim, linear and smooth-transition panel local projections are applied to a data set composed of quarterly data on nine selected Euro area countries for the period 1999Q1−2018Q4. The results show that the linear multiplier is approximately 1.3 and so above unity. This is, however, an “average result” as clear evidence is found in favor of state dependency. Particularly, the findings indicate that the multiplier is approximately 2.0 in the slack regime, while it is below 0.5 in the good regime. These results are robust along several dimensions, such as alternative measures of slack and controlling for fiscal foresight. Some linear and state-dependent transmission channels are also investigated.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the editor William A. Barnett, the associate editor, and two anonymous referees for their insightful comments and suggestions.

References

Alesina, A. and Ardagna, S.. (2010) Large changes in fiscal policy: Taxes versus spending. Tax Policy and the Economy 24(1), 3568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alloza, M. (2017). Is fiscal policy more effective in uncertain times or during recessions? Working Paper 1730, Banco de Espana.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amendola, A., Di Serio, M., Fragetta, M. and Melina, G.. (2020) The euro-area government spending multiplier at the effective lower bound. European Economic Review 127, 103480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auerbach, A. J. and Gorodnichenko, Y.. (2012) Measuring the output responses to fiscal policy. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 4(2), 127.Google Scholar
Auerbach, A. J. and Gorodnichenko, Y. (2013). Fiscal multipliers in recession and expansion. In: Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi (eds.), Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis, pp. 63–98. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auerbach, A. J. and Gorodnichenko, Y.. (2017). Fiscal stimulus and fiscal sustainability. Working Paper 23789, National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bachmann, R. and Sims, E. R.. (2012) Confidence and the transmission of government spending shocks. Journal of Monetary Economics 59(3), 235249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banerjee, R. and Zampolli, F.. (2019) What drives the short-run costs of fiscal consolidation? Evidence from oecd countries. Economic Modelling 82, 420436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barro, R. J. (1981) Output effects of government purchases. Journal of Political Economy 89(6), 10861121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barro, R. J. and Redlick, C. J.. (2011) Macroeconomic effects from government purchases and taxes. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 126(1), 51102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basso, H. S. and Rachedi, O.. (2021) The young, the old, and the government: Demographics and fiscal multipliers. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 13(4), 110141.Google Scholar
Batini, N., Callegari, G. and Melina, G.. (2012). Successful austerity in the united states, europe and japan. Working Paper no. 12/190, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Ben Zeev, N. and Pappa, E.. (2017) Chronicle of a war foretold: The macroeconomic effects of anticipated defence spending shocks. The Economic Journal 127(603), 15681597.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernardini, M. and Peersman, G.. (2018) Private debt overhang and the government spending multiplier: Evidence for the united states. Journal of Applied Econometrics 33(4), 485508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanchard, O. and Perotti, R.. (2002) An empirical characterization of the dynamic effects of changes in government spending and taxes on output. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117(4), 13291368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boehm, C. E. (2020) Government consumption and investment: Does the composition of purchases affect the multiplier? Journal of Monetary Economics 115, 8093.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonam, D., De Haan, J. and Soederhuizen, B.. (2022) The effects of fiscal policy at the effective lower bound. Macroeconomic Dynamics 26(1), 149185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burriel, P., De Castro, F., Garrote, D., Gordo, E., Paredes, J. and Pérez, J. J.. (2010) Fiscal policy shocks in the euro area and the us: An empirical assessment. Fiscal Studies 31(2), 251285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caggiano, G., Castelnuovo, E., Colombo, V. and Nodari, G.. (2015) Estimating fiscal multipliers: News from a non-linear world. The Economic Journal 125(584), 746776.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldara, D. and Kamps, C.. (2008). What are the effects of fiscal policy shocks? a var-based comparative analysis. Working Paper 877/2008, European Central Bank.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canzoneri, M., Collard, F., Dellas, H. and Diba, B.. (2016) Fiscal multipliers in recessions. The Economic Journal 126(590), 75108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castelnuovo, E. and Lim, G.. (2019) What do we know about the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy? A brief survey of the literature on fiscal multipliers. Australian Economic Review 52(1), 7893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christiano, L., Eichenbaum, M. and Rebelo, S.. (2011) When is the government spending multiplier large? Journal of Political Economy 119(1), 78121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen-Setton, J., Gornostay, E. and Ladreit, C.. (2019). Aggregate effects of budget stimulus: Evidence from the large fiscal expansions database. Peterson Institute for International Economics Working Paper, (19-12).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corsetti, G., Meier, A. and Müller, G. J.. (2012) What determines government spending multipliers? Economic Policy 27(72), 521565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
d’Alessandro, A., Fella, G. and Melosi, L.. (2019) Fiscal stimulus with learning-by-doing. International Economic Review 60(3), 14131432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deleidi, M. (2022) Quantifying multipliers in italy: Does fiscal policy composition matter? Oxford Economic Papers 74(2), 359381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deleidi, M., Iafrate, F. and Levrero, E. S.. (2020) Public investment fiscal multipliers: An empirical assessment for european countries. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 52, 354365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deleidi, M., Iafrate, F. and Levrero, E. S. (2021a) Government investment fiscal multipliers: Evidence from euro-area countries. Macroeconomic Dynamics, 1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1365100521000419 Google Scholar
Deleidi, M., Romaniello, D. and Tosi, F.. (2021b) Quantifying fiscal multipliers in italy: A panel svar analysis using regional data. Papers in Regional Science 100(5), 11581177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLong, J. B., Summers, L. H., Feldstein, M. and Ramey, V. A.. (2012) Fiscal policy in a depressed economy. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring, 233297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driscoll, J. C. and Kraay, A. C.. (1998) Consistent covariance matrix estimation with spatially dependent panel data. Review of Economics and Statistics 80(4), 549560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fatás, A. and Mihov, I.. (2001) The effects of fiscal policy on consumption and employment: Theory and evidence. CEPR Discussion Papers 2760, 340507.Google Scholar
Fazzari, S. M., Morley, J. and Panovska, I.. (2015) State-dependent effects of fiscal policy. Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics 19(3), 285315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraresi, T., Roventini, A. and Fagiolo, G.. (2015) Fiscal policies and credit regimes: A tvar approach. Journal of Applied Econometrics 30(7), 10471072.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galí, J., López-Salido, J. D. and Vallés, J.. (2007) Understanding the effects of government spending on consumption. Journal of the European Economic Association 5(1), 227270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gechert, S. and Rannenberg, A.. (2018) Which fiscal multipliers are regime-dependent? A meta-regression analysis. Journal of Economic Surveys 32(4), 11601182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghassibe, M. and Zanetti, F.. (2020. State dependence of fiscal multipliers: the source of fluctuations matters. Available at SSRN 3756128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glocker, C., Sestieri, G. and Towbin, P.. (2019) Time-varying government spending multipliers in the uk. Journal of Macroeconomics 60, 180197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gomes, F. A. R., Sakurai, S. N. and Soave, G. P. (2022) Government spending multipliers in good times and bad times: The case of emerging markets. Macroeconomic Dynamics, 26(3), 726–768.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, R. E. (2009). By how much does gdp rise if the government buys more output? Working Paper 15496, National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ilzetzki, E., Mendoza, E. G. and Végh, C. A.. (2013) How big (small?) are fiscal multipliers? Journal of Monetary Economics 60(2), 239254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordà, Ò. (2005) Estimation and inference of impulse responses by local projections. American Economic Review 95(1), 161182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordà, Ò. and Taylor, A. M.. (2016) The time for austerity: Estimating the average treatment effect of fiscal policy. The Economic Journal 126(590), 219255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kilian, L. and Lütkepohl, H.. (2017) Structural Vector Autoregressive Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leeper, E. M., Walker, T. B. and Yang, S.-C. S.. (2013) Fiscal foresight and information flows. Econometrica 81(3), 11151145.Google Scholar
Li, D., Plagborg-Møller, M. and Wolf, C. K.. (2021) Local projections vs. vars: Lessons from thousands of dgps, arXiv preprint arXiv: 2104.00655.Google Scholar
Mertens, K. and Ravn, M. O.. (2010) Measuring the impact of fiscal policy in the face of anticipation: A structural var approach. The Economic Journal 120(544), 393413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michaillat, P. (2014) A theory of countercyclical government multiplier. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 6(1), 190217.Google Scholar
Miyamoto, H. and Yoshino, N.. (2022) A note on population aging and effectiveness of fiscal policy. Macroeconomic Dynamics 26(6), 16791689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miyamoto, W., Nguyen, T. L. and Sergeyev, D.. (2018) Government spending multipliers under the zero lower bound: Evidence from Japan. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 10(3), 247277.Google Scholar
Mountford, A. and Uhlig, H.. (2009) What are the effects of fiscal policy shocks? Journal of Applied Econometrics 24(6), 960992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owyang, M. T., Ramey, V. A. and Zubairy, S.. (2013) Are government spending multipliers greater during periods of slack? Evidence from twentieth-century historical data. American Economic Review 103(3), 129134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perotti, R. (1999) Fiscal policy in good times and bad. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114(4), 13991436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perotti, R. (2004). Public investment: Another (different) look.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perotti, R. (2005). Estimating the effects of fiscal policy in oecd countries. CEPR Discussion paper 4842.Google Scholar
Perotti, R. (2014). Defense government spending is contractionary, civilian government spending is expansionary. Working Paper 20179, National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramey, V. A. (2011a) Can government purchases stimulate the economy? Journal of Economic Literature 49(3), 673685.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramey, V. A. (2011b) Identifying government spending shocks: It’s all in the timing. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 126(1), 150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramey, V. A. (2016) Macroeconomic shocks and their propagation. Handbook of Macroeconomics 2, 71162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramey, V. A. (2019) Ten years after the financial crisis: What have we learned from the renaissance in fiscal research? Journal of Economic Perspectives 33(2), 89114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramey, V. A. and Shapiro, M. D.. (1998) Costly capital reallocation and the effects of government spending. In: Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy. Elsevier, 48, 145194.Google Scholar
Ramey, V. A. and Zubairy, S.. (2018) Government spending multipliers in good times and in bad: Evidence from us historical data. Journal of Political Economy 126(2), 850901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shoag, D. (2010). The impact of government spending shocks: Evidence on the multiplier from state pension plan returns. Unpublished paper, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Sims, E. R. (2012) News, non-invertibility, and structural vars. In DSGE Models in Macroeconomics: Estimation, Evaluation, and New Developments. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Google Scholar
Spilimbergo, A., Schindler, M. and Symansky, S. (2009), Fiscal Multipliers. IMF Staff Position Note 09/11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, J. C. and Xia, F. D. (2016) Measuring the macroeconomic impact of monetary policy at the zero lower bound. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 48(2-3), 253–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, J. C. and Xia, F. D.. (2017). Time-varying lower bound of interest rates in europe. Chicago Booth Research Paper, (17-06).CrossRefGoogle Scholar