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The automatic fiscal stabilizers: quietly doing their thing

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Author Info
Darrel Cohen
Glenn Follette
Abstract

This paper presents theoretical and empirical analysis of automatic fiscal stabilizers, such as the income tax and unemployment insurance benefits. Using the modern theory of consumption behavior, we identify several channels--insurance effects, wealth effects and liquidity constraints- -through which the optimal reaction of household consumption plans to aggregate income shocks is tempered by the automatic fiscal stabilizers. In addition we identify a cash flow channel for investment. The empirical importance of automatic stabilizers is addressed in several ways. We estimate elasticities of the various federal taxes with respect to their tax bases and responses of certain components of federal spending to changes in the unemployment rate. Such estimates are useful for analysts who forecast federal revenues and spending; the estimates also allow high- employment or cyclically-adjusted federal tax receipts and expenditures to be estimated. Using frequency domain techniques, we confirm that the relationships found in the time domain are strong at the business cycle frequencies. Using the FRB/US macro-econometric model of the United States economy, the automatic fiscal stabilizers are found to play a modest role at damping the short-run effect of aggregate demand shocks on real GDP, reducing the "multiplier" by about 10 percent. Very little stabilization is provided in the case of an aggregate supply shock.

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Paper provided by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) in its series Finance and Economics Discussion Series with number 1999-64.

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Date of creation: 1999
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:1999-64

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Keywords: Economic stabilization ; Business cycles;

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This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: References listed on IDEAS
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  2. Barsky, Robert B & Mankiw, N Gregory & Zeldes, Stephen P, 1986. "Ricardian Consumers with Keynesian Propensities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 676-91, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Susanto Basu & Alan M. Taylor, 1999. "Business Cycles in International Historical Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 45-68, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Aschauer, David Alan, 1985. "Fiscal Policy and Aggregate Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(1), pages 117-27, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. McCallum, B. T. & Whitaker, J. K., 1979. "The effectiveness of fiscal feedback rules and automatic stabilizers under rational expectations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 171-186, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Baxter, Marianne & King, Robert G, 1993. "Fiscal Policy in General Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 315-34, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Christiano, Lawrence J., 1984. "A reexamination of the theory of automatic stabilizers," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 147-206, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Alan J. Auerbach & Daniel Feenberg, 2000. "The Significance of Federal Taxes as Automatic Stabilizers," NBER Working Papers 7662, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Andrew Atkeson & Christopher Phelan, 1994. "Reconsidering the Costs of Business Cycles with Incomplete Markets," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1994, Volume 9, pages 187-218 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
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  10. Jonathan A. Parker, 1999. "The Reaction of Household Consumption to Predictable Changes in Social Security Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 959-973, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. R. Glenn Hubbard, 1998. "Capital-Market Imperfections and Investment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 193-225, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Nicholas S. Souleles, 1999. "The Response of Household Consumption to Income Tax Refunds," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 947-958, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. David Reifschneider & Robert Tetlow & John Williams, 1999. "Aggregate disturbances, monetary policy, and the macroeconomy: the FRB/US perspective," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), issue Jan, pages 1-19. [Downloadable!]
  14. Rebecca M. Blank, 1997. "What Causes Public Assistance Caseloads to Grow?," NBER Working Papers 6343, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. F. Brayton & P. Tinsley, 1996. "A guide to FRB/US: a macroeconomic model of the United States," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 96-42, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  16. Chan, Louis Kuo Chi, 1983. "Uncertainty and the neutrality of government financing policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 351-372. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Darrel Cohen, 1999. "An analysis of government spending in the frequency domain," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-26, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  18. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1981. "Output, the Stock Market, and Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(1), pages 132-43, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Deaton, A. & Grosh, M., 1998. "Consumption," Papers 191, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Development Studies.
  20. Diebold, Francis X & Rudebusch, Glenn D, 1992. "Have Postwar Economic Fluctuations Been Stabilized?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 993-1005, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Lane, P.R., 2002. "Monetary-Fiscal Interactions in an Uncertain World: Lessons for European Policymakers," CEG Working Papers 20027, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  2. Thomas J. Kniesner & James P. Ziliak, 2000. "Tax Reform and Automatic Stabilization," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0788, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
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