This paper documents time variation in fiscal policy multipliers in Germany, the UK and the US over the period 1971-2009. The analysis is based on a quarterly vector autoregression (VAR) model. For the German and the UK cases, the VAR is augmented by "global factors" representing developments in the world economy. By estimating these models on different samples of data, our evidence indicates that fiscal multipliers have substantially changed over time, often in a non-monotonic way. In particular, for Germany, the net tax multiplier is found to follow a humped-shaped curve, peaking in the middle of the 1990s, declining thereafter, before rising again during the recent 2008-2009 crisis. Government spending shocks are found to be more powerful to stimulate output after the reunification. We show that significant crowding-in effects for private investments contribute to explain this finding. For the UK, we observe large variations in fiscal multipliers over the period, with non-Keynesian developments during the fiscal consolidation period of the 1980s. After that, British multipliers are low and only pick up at the very end of the sample, when the 2008-2009 crisis is included in the analysis. For the US, short-run multipliers appear to be broadly stable over the period, but medium-run multipliers tend to decline, in particular in the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s. This can be due to the large fiscal imbalances over this period that may have triggered Ricardian effects, before a fiscal surplus was achieved at the end of the 1990s.
This paper documents time variation in fiscal policy multipliers in Germany, the UK and the US over the period 1971-2009. The analysis is based on a quarterly vector autoregression (VAR) model. For the German and the UK cases, the VAR is augmented by "global factors" representing developments in the world economy. By estimating these models on different samples of data, our evidence indicates that fiscal multipliers have substantially changed over time, often in a non-monotonic way. In particular, for Germany, the net tax multiplier is found to follow a humped-shaped curve, peaking in the middle of the 1990s, declining thereafter, before rising again during the recent 2008-2009 crisis. Government spending shocks are found to be more powerful to stimulate output after the reunification. We show that significant crowding-in effects for private investments contribute to explain this finding. For the UK, we observe large variations in fiscal multipliers over the period, with non-Keynesian developments during the fiscal consolidation period of the 1980s. After that, British multipliers are low and only pick up at the very end of the sample, when the 2008-2009 crisis is included in the analysis. For the US, short-run multipliers appear to be broadly stable over the period, but medium-run multipliers tend to decline, in particular in the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s. This can be due to the large fiscal imbalances over this period that may have triggered Ricardian effects, before a fiscal surplus was achieved at the end of the 1990s.
Titre
en
Changing Patterns of Fiscal Policy Multipliers in Germany, the UK and the US
Auteur(s)
Jacopo Cimadomo1, 2
, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré3, 4, 1
1
CEPII -
Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales
( 39083 )
- 9 rue Georges Pitard - 75740 Paris Cedex 15
- France
Centre d'analyse stratégique ( 309406 )
2
European Central Bank
( 81128 )
- Kaiserstrasse 29, D-60311 Frankfurt/Main
- Allemagne
ECB ( 320780 )
3
CES -
Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne
( 15080 )
- Maison des Sciences Économiques - 106-112 Boulevard de l'Hôpital - 75647 Paris Cedex 13
- France
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne UMR8174 ( 7550 )
;
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UMR8174 ( 441569 )
4
PSE -
Paris School of Economics
( 301309 )
- 48 boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris
- France
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne ( 7550 )
;
École normale supérieure - Paris ( 59704 )
;
Université Paris Sciences et Lettres ( 564132 )
;
École des hautes études en sciences sociales ( 99539 )
;
École des Ponts ParisTech ( 301545 )
;
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique ( 441569 )
;
Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement ( 577435 )
Langue du document
Anglais
Vulgarisation
Non
Comité de lecture
Oui
Nom de la revue
Journal of Macroeconomics
(ISSN : 0164-0704)
Publié par Elsevier
Revue non référencée dans Sherpa-Romeo
E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics/E.E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy/E.E2.E23 - Production
E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics/E.E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles/E.E3.E32 - Business Fluctuations • Cycles
E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics/E.E6 - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook/E.E6.E62 - Fiscal Policy
H - Public Economics/H.H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies/H.H5.H50 - General
Domaine(s)
Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Economies et finances
Financement
Ce travail a bénéficié d'une aide de l'Etat gérée par l'Agence Nationale de la Recherche au titre du programme " Investissements d'avenir " portant la référence ANR-10-LABX-93-01. This work was supported by the French National Research Agency, through the program Investissements d'Avenir, ANR-10--LABX-93-01.
Jacopo Cimadomo, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré. Changing Patterns of Fiscal Policy Multipliers in Germany, the UK and the US. Journal of Macroeconomics, 2012, 34 (3), pp.845-873. ⟨10.1016/j.jmacro.2012.02.006⟩. ⟨hal-00966144⟩