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Labour Market Adjustment, Social Spending and the Automatic Stabilizers in the OECD

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Author Info
Darby, Julia
Mélitz, Jacques

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Abstract

The macroeconomic literature on automatic stabilization tends to focus on taxes and dismiss the relevance of government expenditure, aside from unemployment compensation. Our results go sharply contrary to this view. We engage in an empirical analysis of 20 OECD countries from 1980-2001 and find that age- and health-related social expenditure as well as incapacity benefits all react to the cycle in a stabilizing manner. While possibly new in the macro literature, this conforms to many results in studies of labour and health. Moreover, when the focus is on the ratio of the net surplus to output, automatic stabilization comes essentially from the spending side. Taxes contribute nothing at all.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 6230.

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Date of creation: Mar 2007
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6230

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Related research
Keywords: automatic stabilization; cyclically adjusted budget balances; discretionary fiscal policy;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General
E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook

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  1. Simone Bertoli & Francesco Farina, 2007. "The functional distribution of income: a review of the theoretical literature and of the empirical evidence around its recent pattern in European countries," Department of Economic Policy, Finance and Development (DEPFID) University of Siena 005, Department of Economic Policy, Finance and Development (DEPFID), University of Siena. [Downloadable!]
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