Fiscal Austerity and the Multiplier in Times of Crisis

To address concerns about the sustainability of public debt, most industrialized countries shifted towards fiscal austerity after 2010. A popular concern is that austerity is self‐defeating, because fiscal multipliers can be large. Specifically, a number of recent studies find that multipliers tend to be large during financial crises and/or if monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound. However, public debt crises tend to have an offsetting effect by making multipliers smaller than during normal times. Consequently, while austerity is no cure for all, it is unlikely to be literally self‐defeating when sovereign risk is high.     

Fiscal federalism in rentier regions: Evidence from Russia

When does sub-national fiscal autonomy prompt regional growth and recovery and, under what conditions, does it have adverse effects? We argue that unearned income streams, particularly in the form of revenues from natural resource production or from budgetary transfers from the central government, transform regions dependent on these income sources into rentier regions. Governments in these regions can use local control over revenues and expenditures to shelter certain firms, i.e., natural resource producers or loss-making enterprises, from market forces. Using fiscal data from 80 Russian regions from 1996 to 1999, we test this hypothesis in both cross-sectional and panel specifications. Our results indicate that tax retention, which is a proxy for fiscal autonomy, has had a positive effect on regional reform and investment since the break-up of the Soviet Union. However, we also find that this effect decreases as rentable income streams to regions increase. Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (4) (2005) 814–834.     

中国财政政策理论乘数和实际乘数效应研究

本文通过建立宏观经济模型,分别测算了我国的理论财政政策乘数和实际财政政策乘数.测算结果表明,这两种财政政策的乘数值都不大,尤其是实际作用乘数的值明显偏低,财政政策的挤出效应也不明显.就乘数的影响因素来看,其可能原因在于我国的边际消费倾向过低,同时消费存在很大的刚性.根据上述乘数的测算值,我们还分别估算了在两种模型下财政政策的综合乘数效应.显然,财政政策是政府调节经济的主要杠杆,其中政府购买支出是最主要的政策工具.此外,尽管理论和实际作用乘数相差很大,但两者最终形成的乘数效应对经济的拉动作用相差不大,甚至财政政策的实际乘数效应在多数年份超过理论乘数效应.     

Foreign informational lobbying can enhance tourism: Evidence from the Caribbean

There exist legal channels for informational lobbying of US policymakers by foreign principals. Foreign governments and private sector principals frequently and intensively use this institutional channel to lobby on trade and tourism issues. This paper empirically studies whether such lobbying effectively achieves its goal of trade promotion in the context of Caribbean tourism, and suggests the potential for using foreign lobbying as a vehicle for development. Panel data are used to explore and quantify the association between foreign lobbying by Caribbean principals and US tourist arrivals to Caribbean destinations. A variety of sensitivity analyses support the finding of a strong association. The policy implications are obvious and potentially important for developing countries.     

Foreign informational lobbying can enhance tourism: Evidence from the Caribbean

There exist legal channels for informational lobbying of US policymakers by foreign principals. Foreign governments and private sector principals frequently and intensively use this institutional channel to lobby on trade and tourism issues. This paper empirically studies whether such lobbying effectively achieves its goal of trade promotion in the context of Caribbean tourism, and suggests the potential for using foreign lobbying as a vehicle for development. Panel data are used to explore and quantify the association between foreign lobbying by Caribbean principals and US tourist arrivals to Caribbean destinations. A variety of sensitivity analyses support the finding of a strong association. The policy implications are obvious and potentially important for developing countries.     

Smallness and Status Debates in Overseas Territories: Evidence from the Dutch Caribbean

While non-sovereignty is often presented as a rational and pragmatic political status option, this paper asserts that the smallness of overseas territories in various ways obstructs and distorts the formation of an informed local public debate about this political status. Due to personalistic politics, patron-client relations, excessive executive dominance, and the lack of professional media, which all are consequences of a small population size, the extent to which citizens of overseas territories are involved and represented in status debates is limited. The paper uses the 2010 political reforms of the Dutch Caribbean islands as an illustrative case study, to show how the smallness of these islands has obstructed a balanced consideration of status options among the population.     

财政透明度中的资源诅咒-基于四川省县级财政自主性的经验证据

本文研究了财政自主性与财政透明度的经验关系及其反映出的地方政府行为逻辑。我们发现,更多的自有财源和更强的财政自主性并没有为财政透明度提升创造有利条件,反而表现为政府财务公开的一大阻碍。我们将此现象解释为财政透明度中的资源诅咒,并认为现有的财政体制和问责机制是其主要成因。要破除财政自主性对于财政透明度的诅咒效应,有待于通过收入分权培养形成与地方支出责任相适应的财政自给能力,同时完善社会公众自下而上推动财政透明的参与和监督机制。     

Fiscal Transparency,Elections and Public Employment: Evidence from the OECD

There is considerable variation in levels and changes in public employment within and between developed democracies. This article highlights the importance of fiscal transparency in determining changes in public employment. It argues that economic growth increases public employment under low fiscal transparency and that this effect is strongest in years of election. These hypotheses are tested on a panel of 20 OECD countries from 1995 to 2010. The analyses show substantial evidence in favor of the arguments. Fiscal transparency lowers the positive effect of growth on public employment, a relationship, which is most robust in election years.     

Labor-Market Search, Financial Market Integration, and the Fiscal Multiplier

We used a two-country optimizing "new-open-economy macroeconomics" model to analyze the implications of financial market integration for the fiscal multiplier. The fiscal multiplier measures the accumulated effect of fiscal policy on output. Our model features a labor-market friction in the form of labor-market search. The conventional wisdom derived from the basic textbook version of the classic Mundell–Fleming model has been that financial market integration diminishes the fiscal multiplier. We show that labor-market search implies that financial market integration should increase rather than decrease the fiscal multiplier.     

Expansionary Fiscal Contractions? Evidence from Panel Data

We examine the ability of the expansionary fiscal contraction (EFC) hypothesis to explain the performance of OECD economies during fiscal crises. We find some limited evidence in its favour: if public consumption is reduced in response to a fiscal crisis (as defined by a high level of debt), private consumption does seem to increase. However, the size of the effect is smaller than that typically found in other studies. Furthermore, the increase in private consumption is usually not sufficient to offset the direct effect of a reduction in public consumption on output—fiscal contractions are not literally expansionary.     

Fiscal rules to tame the political budget cycle: Evidence from Italian municipalities

The paper provides evidence that fiscal rules can limit the political budget cycle. It uses data on Italian municipalities during the 2000s and shows that: 1) municipalities are subject to political budget cycles in capital spending; 2) the Italian sub-national fiscal rule (Domestic Stability Pact, DSP) introduced in 1999 has been enforced by the central government; 3) municipalities subject to the fiscal rule show more limited political budget cycles than municipalities not subject to the rule. In order to identify the effect, we rely on the fact that the domestic fiscal rule does not apply to municipalities below 5000 inhabitants. We find that the political budget cycle increases real capital spending by about 10–20 percent on average in the years prior to municipal elections and that municipalities subject to the DSP show a pre-electoral increase in capital spending which is only a quarter of the one of municipalities not subject to the rule.     

Fiscal Shocks and the Current Account in the Redux Model: Evidence from the Italian Economy

The main goal of this paper is to study the effects of fiscal policy on the current account in the Italian economy through the analysis of one of the most innovative intertemporal models of recent years, the Obstfeld–Rogoff Redux model. The author proposes an innovative econometric approach to the model, based on the estimation of the microeconomic parameters that appear in its fundamental equations. The estimated parameters are used to empirically determine the multipliers that, according to the theory, connect permanent and temporary variations in public expenditure to the current account. Estimation is carried out on a dynamic extension of the original model, which has been developed modifying the first order conditions system of the maximization problem. Finally, the author provides a comparison between the results obtained and the actual dynamics of the Italian current account balance.     

财政分权对政府支出乘数的影响:促进还是抑制

本文运用1994-2015年省级面板数据从时间及区域差异性两个层面出发,基于平滑转移面板向量自回归(PSTVAR)模型考察了财政分权对政府支出乘数的影响,实证结果表明,1994-2007年期间东、中、西部地区财政分权对短期及长期政府支出乘数均为显著的促进作用;2008-2015年期间,财政分权对东部地区短期、长期政府支出乘数及西部地区长期政府支出乘数均表现为抑制作用,虽然对中部地区短期、长期政府支出乘数及西部地区长期政府支出乘数仍然为促进作用,但是相比1994-2007年期间,2008-2015年期间的促进效果变弱。     

The Fiscal Multiplier in a Liquidity‐Constrained New Keynesian Economy

We study the effects of fiscal policy on the macroeconomy using a liquidity‐constrained New Keynesian model in which government bonds are liquid, and private financial assets are only partially liquid. We find that the fiscal multipliers in this economic environment are large enough for fiscal policy to be highly effective. In this model, a bond‐financed fiscal expansion can stimulate output because higher public borrowing improves liquidity by increasing the proportion of liquid assets in private‐sector wealth.     

时变乘数效应与改革开放以来中国财政政策效果测定

财政政策效果测定历来是国家政策制定与改革关注的重点。本文基于约束的VAR模型提出了具有微观基础的财政政策时变乘数指标,并分解测算了改革开放以来中国财政支出和政府融资的时变冲击乘数、时变累积乘数以及时变现值乘数。同时,结合中国实际,通过一个理论模型分析了财政政策的乘数效应及其影响因素。研究结果表明,政府投资乘数呈减弱趋势,政府消费乘数亦呈小幅下降态势。政府税收乘数显著为负且相对较为稳定,但债务发行乘数呈明显下降趋势,并于2006年起由正转负。基于模型校准和经验分析可知,目前政策当局依然可通过增加消费性支出促进经济增长;但是,需要管控政府投资规模,因为随政府投资产出弹性下降和规模扩大,政府投资乘数急速下滑势必削弱财政政策效果。同时,由于中国税收并未引发大规模挤占效应,因此目前税收格局相对合理。此外,鉴于当前债务发行存在负经济增长效应,表明政策当局仍需重点盯住和管控债务规模。在此基础上,结合微观主体流动性约束强弱和结构性参数走向,本文提出了增强财政政策效果的对策建议。     

财政与规制管理竞争——理论与实证

经济竞争并不仅仅是私营经济部门的主要特征:政府自身同样积极参与竞争以吸引新的商业投资、就业和收入以鼓励经济发展。此外,这是一个有争议的重大问题。某些观察家把这种竞争看作是一种导致实力削弱的“竞相向下限造就”的破坏性力量,结果造成伴有公众     

Fiscal Federalism and Legislative Malapportionment: Causal Evidence from Independent but Related Natural Experiments

We exploit three natural experiments in Argentina in order to study the role of legislative malapportionment on the biased federal tax sharing scheme prevalent in the country. We do not find support to attribute it to legislative malapportionment during periods when democratic governments were in place; nor did we find any evidence that the tax sharing distribution pattern became less biased under centralized military governments. We argue that these results are at least partly attributable to two of Argentina's institutional characteristics: first, the predominance of the executive branch over the legislature (main fiscal decisions are the outcome of a bargaining process among executive authorities); and, second, the lack of any significant difference in the pattern of geographic representation in the executive branch under democratic and autocratic governments. Thus, the observed biases in the distribution of tax revenues among the Argentine provinces are not caused by legislative malapportionment, but are probably the result of a more structural equilibrium that transcends the geographic distribution of legislative representation and even the nature of the political regime. Our findings illustrate the importance of informal institutions and de facto mechanisms to study fiscal federalism in developing countries.     

Income and Fiscal Incidence by Age and Gender: Some Evidence from New Zealand

With many fiscal policies likely to have quite different age/gender incidences, this paper examines age and gender dimensions of income distribution and fiscal incidence in New Zealand using Household Economic Survey data for 2010. Applying, and testing, an intra‐household income sharing rule, our evidence suggests strong life‐cycle and gender aspects to fiscal incidence. Net tax liabilities are found to be low and negative, at younger and older ages but positive during much of the “working age.” Notwithstanding considerable within‐gender heterogeneity, women are found on average to have systematically and persistently lower net fiscal liabilities than men, especially at older ages.     

Fiscal and External Deficits Nexus in GIIPS Countries: Evidence from Parametric and Nonparametric Causality Tests

International Advances in Economic Research - This paper investigates the relationship between fiscal and external deficits in five European Union countries (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and...     

转型中的分权与公共品供给:基于中国经验的实证研究

文章首先从理论上阐述了中国转型中分权与公共品供给的内在联系;进而利用中国省级面板数据,构建动态结构模型,在控制住财政分权与公共品内生关系基础上,运用系统广义矩估计方法(SYS GMM)检验证实了理论分析的推论:分权对"硬"公共品供给有明显加速作用,时"软"公共品供给有明显抑制作用;经济较差的地区,分权速度会加快,其中人口密度较高的地区分权速度要比人口密度低的地区快;人口密度较高、经济较好的地区分权速度会减弱;分权程度变化与政府行政效率间存在显著正相关关系."发展型政府"更偏好"硬"公共品供给,因而更偏好高分权.