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Targeted Transfers and the Fiscal Response to the Great Recession

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  • Hyunseung Oh
  • Ricardo Reis

Abstract

Between 2007 and 2009, government expenditures increased rapidly across the OECD countries. While economic research on the impact of government purchases has flourished, in the data, about three quarters of the increase in expenditures in the United States (and more in other countries) was in government transfers. We document this fact, and show that the increase in U.S. spending on retirement, disability, and medical care has been as high as the increase in government purchases. We argue that future research should focus on the positive impact of transfers. Towards this, we present a model in which there is no representative agent and Ricardian equivalence does not hold because of uncertainty, imperfect credit markets, and nominal rigidities. Targeted lump-sum transfers are expansionary both because of a neoclassical wealth effect and because of a Keynesian aggregate demand effect.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 16775.

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Date of creation: Feb 2011
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16775

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Jonathan A. Parker, 2011. "On Measuring the Effects of Fiscal Policy in Recessions," NBER Working Papers 17240, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Tommaso Monacelli & Roberto Perotti, 2011. "Tax Cuts, Redistribution, and Borrowing Constraints," Working Papers 408, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
  3. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante, 2011. "A Model of the Consumption Response to Fiscal Stimulus Payments," NBER Working Papers 17338, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. John B. Taylor, 2011. "An Empirical Analysis of the Revival of Fiscal Activism in the 2000s," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(3), pages 686-702, September.
  5. Gabriele Galati & John Lewis & Steven Poelhekke & Chen Zhou, 2011. "Have market views on the sustainability of fiscal burdens influenced monetary authorities' credibility?," DNB Working Papers 304, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.

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