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Estimating the effects of fiscal policy under the budget constraint

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Author Info
Peter Claeys () (Faculty of Economics, University of Barcelona.)

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Abstract

I reconsider the short-term effects of fiscal policy when both government spending and taxes are allowed to respond to the level of public debt. I embed the long-term government budget constraint in a VAR, and apply this common trends model to US quarterly data. The results overturn some widely held beliefs on fiscal policy effects. The main finding is that expansionary fiscal policy has contractionary effects on output and inflation. Ricardian effects may dominate when fiscal expansions are expected to be adjusted by future tax rises or spending cuts. The evidence supports RBC models with distortionary taxation. We can discard some alternative interpretations that are based on monetary policy reactions or supply-side effects.

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Paper provided by University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics in its series IREA Working Papers with number 200715.

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Length: 45 pages
Date of creation: Jul 2007
Date of revision: Jul 2007
Handle: RePEc:ira:wpaper:200715

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Related research
Keywords: fiscal policy sustainability spending taxes common trends SVAR.

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
E63 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Comparative or Joint Analysis of Fiscal and Monetary Policy; Stabilization
E65 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes

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