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What are the Effects of Fiscal Policy Shocks?

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Author Info
Andrew Mountford
Harald Uhlig

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Abstract

We propose and apply a new approach for analyzing the effects of fiscal policy using vector autoregressions. Specifically, we use sign restrictions to identify a government revenue shock as well as a government spending shock, while controlling for a generic business cycle shock and a monetary policy shock. We explicitly allow for the possibility of announcement effects, i.e., that a current fiscal policy shock changes fiscal policy variables in the future, but not at present. We construct the impulse responses to three linear combinations of these fiscal shocks, corresponding to the three scenarios of deficit-spending, deficit-financed tax cuts and a balanced budget spending expansion. We apply the method to US quarterly data from 1955-2000. We find that deficit-financed tax cuts work best among these three scenarios to improve GDP, with a maximal present value multiplier of five dollars of total additional GDP per each dollar of the total cut in government revenue five years after the shock.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 14551.

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Date of creation: Dec 2008
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14551

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions
E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General
E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy
H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
H60 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - General

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