Variation in the fiscal multiplier with the method of financing: evidence across industrial countries

Government spending has often varied with the business cycle to stimulate the economy and to revive economic conditions. However, the state of public finances has often necessitated higher borrowing to finance widening fiscal deficits. Indeed, recent austerity packages around the globe have crystalized the importance of fiscal consolidation against the backdrop of rising public debt. To shed light on recent debates regarding fiscal multipliers, the article estimates variation in these multipliers with the method of financing, using annual data for a sample of industrial countries. There is a large variation in the effects of expansionary and contractinary government spending shocks on economic variables within and across countries. The significant effects of negative government spending shocks (fiscal contraction) appear more prevalent than those of expansionary shocks on real output growth, price inflation and nominal wage inflation. Consistent with theory’s predictions, the fiscal multiplier is more likely to be negative when government spending is financed by issuing debt and less likely in the case of monetization. The evidence confirms concerns about the negative effect of higher debt and more expensive financing on private activity, countering the effectiveness of fiscal policy.     

Expansionary Contractions and Fiscal Free Lunches: Too Good To Be True?

This paper builds a framework to jointly examine the possibilities of both expansionary fiscal contractions (austerity increasing output) and fiscal free lunches (expansions reducing government debt), arguments which in recent debates have been supported by the austerity and stimulus camps, respectively. We propose a new metric quantifying the budgetary implications of fiscal action, a key aspect of fiscal policy particularly at the monetary zero lower bound. We find that austerity needs to be highly persistent and credible in order to be expansionary, and stimulus needs to be temporary, responsive, and well‐targeted in order to lower debt. We conclude that neither is likely, especially during periods of economic distress.     

Fiscal Prudence and Growth Sustainability: An Analysis of China's Public Debts

This paper analyses and assesses China's current fiscal system, including its basic institutional arrangements, the relationship between central and local governments, and the fiscal balance and public debt. This paper pays special attention to the local government borrowings that have increased dramatically in recent years, and tries to measure the “overall public debt risk” by including all kinds of eligible debts. This paper finds that although the large expansion of local government debt during the fiscal stimulation response to the global financial crisis was devastating, the all‐inclusive total public debt to gross domestic product ratio remains under 50%, and as long as the local debt stops growing, the risk is quite manageable. This paper also points out that more attention should be paid to improving and reforming the Chinese fiscal system, particularly the reform of the fiscal relationship between central and local governments, and the legal framework for local government debt management.     

Growth forecast errors and government investment and consumption multipliers

We compare government investment and consumption multipliers in developed economies during the initial years of the ongoing fiscal consolidation. We find that, in countries with high public debt, the investment multiplier is likely to be higher than what has been assumed by policy-makers and higher than the consumption multiplier. This leads to the conclusion that the consolidation should be accompanied by increased public investment.     

What drives the short-run costs of fiscal consolidation? Evidence from OECD countries

We investigate how the short-term effects of fiscal consolidation on output and employment vary with the state of the business cycle, monetary policy, public debt, the current account, and private credit. By examining the response of a large number of variables, we are also able to shed light on the transmission channels of fiscal policy. Our main finding is that short-term output multipliers are below unity, even in states in which multipliers are expected to be larger (eg when the output gap is negative or monetary policy tight). Key offsetting factors that reduce the size of multipliers and explain differences across states are the extent to which the external sector improves and monetary policy eases.     

The effectiveness of fiscal spending in Croatia,Slovenia and Serbia: the role of trade openness and public debt level

Various structural characteristics of economies, directly or indirectly, affect the transmission from government stimuli to economic activity and determine the size of fiscal multipliers. In this article, we expand the standard Blanchard–Perotti fiscal SVAR model by incorporating the public debt and trade openness variables to assess the influence of these structural determinants on the effectiveness of fiscal spending in three selected former Yugoslav countries – Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. The results confirmed the main hypotheses, which state that public debt level and trade openness significantly affect the effectiveness of fiscal spending through the means of reduction in size of fiscal effects in all countries analysed. When comparing internationally, this reduction tends to be more evident in countries with a higher degree of average public debt level and trade openness.     

Fiscal transparency, political parties, and debt in OECD countries

Many believe and argue that fiscal, or budgetary, transparency has large, positive effects on fiscal performance. However, the evidence linking transparency and fiscal policy outcomes is less compelling. To analyze the effects of fiscal transparency on public debt accumulation, we present a career-concerns model with political parties. This allows us to integrate as implications of a single model three hitherto-separate results in the literature on deficit and debt accumulation: that transparency decreases debt accumulation (at least by reducing an electoral cycle in deficits), that right-wing governments (at least for strategic reasons) tend to have higher deficits than left-wing governments, and that increasing political polarization increases debt accumulation. To test the predictions of the model, we construct a replicable index of fiscal transparency on 19-country OECD data. Simultaneous estimates of debt and transparency strongly confirm that a higher degree of fiscal transparency is associated with lower public debt and deficits, independent of controls for explanatory variables from other approaches.     

欧债危机成因与前景的制度分析

希腊等欧元区国家的主权债务危机可以说是欧洲区域一体化建设中的独特现象,其折射的是欧元区所存在的一个结构性问题：奉行单一货币政策和各国分散的财政政策,集中暴露出了欧洲货币一体化与欧洲福利资本主义的不相容、以及统一货币运行所要求的财政紧缩与欧元成员国经济增长和福利制度之间的矛盾与冲突;欧元不会就此瓦解,但欧债问题的最终解决困难重重;欧元的未来取决于自由与市场的回归欧洲,取决于欧盟的制度完善与欧式福利资本主义改革的成功与否。     

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.     

Debt Crises and Risk‐Sharing: The Role of Markets versus Sovereigns

Using a variance decomposition of shocks to gross domestic product (GDP), we quantify the role of international factor income, international transfers, and saving in achieving risk‐sharing during the recent European crisis. We focus on the subperiods 1990–2007, 2008–2009, and 2010 and consider separately the European countries hit by the sovereign debt crisis in 2010. We decompose risk‐sharing from saving into contributions from government and private saving, and show that fiscal austerity programs played an important role in hindering risk‐sharing during the sovereign debt crisis.     

Equitable fiscal consolidations

Empirical research has uncovered an equity-efficiency trade-off in alternative fiscal consolidation strategies. Spending-based adjustments are associated with more limited output losses but greater inequality than tax-based adjustments. Moreover, spending-based adjustments are less likely to be reversed, but an increase in inequality reduces the likelihood of achieving a successful consolidation. We investigate the issue of designing a debt consolidation plan which is achieved through a reduction in public consumption and yet is equitable because temporary targeted transfers and tax reductions stabilize consumption of the poorer part of the population. This causes a limited slow-down in the pace of debt reduction because fiscal multipliers associated to the tax/transfer policies are large.     

Fiscal multipliers in the Eurozone: an SVAR analysis

We compute the value of fiscal multipliers (for government primary expenditure, Income and wealth taxes and for Production and import taxes) in the Eurozone countries since the creation of the currency union (2000Q1-2016Q4), in order to understand how the values can vary according to the public debt level, the pace of economic growth, and the output gap. Imposing quarterly fiscal shocks, the results showed that government expenditure had a positive effect on output, with an annual accumulated multiplier of 0.44, whereas tax multipliers presented negative signs: the Income and wealth and the Production and import taxes stood at ?0.11 and ?0.55, respectively. Furthermore, the spending multiplier showed a higher value for countries with lower levels of public debt, during recessions, and in countries with negative output gaps. On the other hand, tax shocks seemed to be recessive in highly indebted countries and those facing positive output gaps.     

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.     

Institutional arrangements and public debt threshold limits

Inter-governmental Organisations, such as the IMF and OECD, advocate a medium-term reduction in deficit spending and public debt accumulation among advanced economies to satisfy conditions of fiscal sustainability. Buttressing the need for fiscal austerity, Reinhart and Rogoff claim to have identified a so-called tipping point, beyond which public debt accumulation negatively affects economic growth. While recent data seem to indicate that some Eurozone (non-sovereign) economies have reached a tipping point, for other advanced (sovereign) economies, such as the US, UK and Japan, this is not clear. The mainstream tipping point literature however does not recognise the importance of institutional arrangements for the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy. Furthermore, the literature sheds little light on the transmission mechanism between high public debt and low economic growth. This article draws on the principles of Modern Monetary Theory to discuss institutional arrangements and to justify the theoretical and empirical focus on Eurozone economies. The empirical analysis unpacks the transmission mechanism(s) to reveal that Eurozone economies have reached a public debt threshold limit with respect to long-term interest rates.     

Cross-country fiscal policy spillovers and capital-skill complementarity in integrated capital markets

The 2010 European sovereign debt crisis has renewed discussions on fiscal policy coordination. One rationale for coordination is fiscal policy cross-country spillovers. A common finding in the literature is that spillovers tend to be small in normal circumstances but can be large if monetary policy is at the zero lower bound. Orthogonal to the existing literature, we document a novel channel that generates cross-country spillovers over the medium run. We assume perfect capital markets integration and find that capital-skill complementarity can lead to large spillovers without the zero lower bound nor a large import share in government expenditures. As capital markets have become increasingly integrated in the Eurozone, the current degree of fiscal policy coordination between its members, low, may be insufficient. We also find that the smoothing benefits from a temporary rise in public debt spill over to other countries.     

Public Debt Reduction in Advanced Countries and Its Impact on Emerging Countries

Financial crises accompanied by banking crises often entail heavy fiscal legacies. For the U.S., for example, the gross government debt to GDP ratio exceeded 100 % in 2012. Due to the unsustainability of public debt, both in the U.S. and in other advanced countries, moves towards a substantial reduction in debt levels would appear to be unavoidable. However, as shown in this paper, the long-run welfare impact of debt reduction in advanced countries, both at home and abroad, may prove to be somewhat of a disincentive for policy makers. In particular, we find that under conditions of dynamic inefficiency, and when Home (U.S.) has a negative external balance and a lower capital production share than Foreign (China), both domestic and foreign welfare decrease if Home reduces public debt.     

The financial fragility and the crisis of the Greek government sector

The purpose of this paper is to develop Minskyan financial fragility indices for the government sector and to examine the financial structure of the Greek government before and after the onset of the sovereign debt crisis in 2009. We provide empirical evidence that clearly shows the growing financial fragility of the Greek public sector in the 2000s. We also assess the effectiveness of the implemented bailout adjustment programmes in Greece and claim that the conducted austerity measures and fiscal consolidation have not significantly improved the financial posture of the Greek government sector. We argue that the implementation of fiscal and wage austerity in an economy that lacks structural competitiveness produces prolonged recession and unemployment with adverse feedback effects on the financial fragility of the government.     

Is fiscal austerity really self-defeating?

This paper analyzes local and global equilibrium dynamics in an optimizing endogenous growth model under expenditure-based fiscal austerity feedback policies expressed relative to the private capital stock—prescribing spending cuts in reaction to public debt accumulation. Because the present value of equilibrium primary surpluses turns to be a nonlinear function of debt, two steady state equilibria are shown to emerge, one exhibiting low debt and high growth, one exhibiting high debt and low growth. Local analysis reveals that the low-debt/high-growth steady state is saddle-path stable while the high-debt/low-growth steady state is unstable—the latter thus indicating the possibility of self-defeating austerity, characterized by off-equilibrium upward spirals in debt because of persistent policy-induced adverse effects on growth dividends and fiscal revenues. However, when global nonlinear dynamics are taken into account, it is demonstrated that the two steady states are endogenously connected. In particular, global analysis reveals that even if the high-debt/low-growth steady state is locally unstable, there exists a unique and possibly nonmonotonic saddle connection making the economy converge to the low-debt/high-growth steady state. The existence of the saddle connection guarantees global determinacy of perfect foresight equilibrium should the high-debt/low-growth steady state be a node, ruling out multiple explosive paths incompatible with the government's intertemporal budget constraint and the private agents' transversality condition. The foregoing results are robust with respect to the adoption of an output-based—rather than a capital-based—policy function as long as the rule is nonlinear and sufficiently reactive to debt changes.     

Fiscal adjustment in a panel of countries 1870–2016

The financial crisis from 2007 and, even more so, the Covid-19 pandemic caused large increases in public sector deficits and debts in many countries and prompted concern about fiscal adjustment. This paper examines fiscal adjustment to debt and deficits for a panel of 17 countries over 1870–2016 using the Jordà–Schularick–Taylor Macrohistory Database. This long span panel is informative since it contains many examples of large fiscal shocks similar to those recently experienced. The results from reduced-form models suggest that large deficits or surpluses tend to prompt stabilising feedbacks, mainly through changes in revenue, and there is greater pressure to adjust on countries running a deficit versus those running a surplus. However, the debt–GDP ratio prompts much less stabilising feedback by expenditure or revenue.¹     

Inequality and public debt: A positive analysis

This study extends the multi‐country, politico‐economic model of fiscal policy to incorporate wage inequality within each country. In this extended framework, we present conflict over fiscal policy within and across generations and show that a low‐inequality country realizes tight fiscal policy with low public debt accumulation, whereas a high‐inequality country experiences loose fiscal policy with high public debt. This model prediction is consistent with empirical evidence from OECD countries for the years 1980 to 2010.