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Do Government Purchases Affect Unemployment?

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  • Steinar Holden
  • Victoria Sparrman

Abstract

We investigate empirically the effect of government purchases on unemployment in 20 OECD countries, for the period 1960-2007. Compared to earlier studies we use a data set with more variation in unemployment, and which allows for controlling for a host of factors that influence the effect of government purchases. We find that increased government purchases lead to lower unemployment; an increase equal to one percent of GDP reduces un-employment by 0.2 percentage point in the same year. The effect is greater in downturns than in booms, and also greater under a fixed exchange rate regime than under a floating regime.

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  • Steinar Holden & Victoria Sparrman, 2011. "Do Government Purchases Affect Unemployment?," CESifo Working Paper Series 3482, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_3482
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    3. Albertini, Julien & Auray, Stéphane & Bouakez, Hafedh & Eyquem, Aurélien, 2021. "Taking off into the wind: Unemployment risk and state-Dependent government spending multipliers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 990-1007.
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    6. Haraldsen, Kristine Wika & Ragnar, Nymoen & Sparrman, Victoria, 2019. "Labour market institutions, shocks and the employment rate," Memorandum 6/2019, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
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    9. Ebell, Monique. & O'Higgins, Niall., 2015. "Fiscal policy and the youth labour market," ILO Working Papers 994898963402676, International Labour Organization.
    10. Nargiza Alymkulova & Nurlan Atabaev & Junus Ganiev, 2016. "Var — analysis of global financial economic crisis impact on public budget and unemployment: evidence from the economy of the Kyrgyz republic," Economy of region, Centre for Economic Security, Institute of Economics of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, vol. 1(4), pages 1090-1101.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    fiscal policy; unemployment;

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General

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