This paper characterizes the dynamic effects of shocks in government spending and taxes on economic activity in the United States in the post-war period. It does so by using a mixed structural VAR/event study approach. Identification is achieved by using institutional information about the tax and transfer systems and the timing of tax collections to identify the automatic response of taxes and spending to activity, and, by implication, to infer fiscal shocks. The results consistently show positive government spending shocks as having a positive effect on output, and positive tax shocks as having a negative effect. The multipliers for both spending and tax shocks are typically small. Turning to the effects of taxes and spending on the components of GDP, one of the results has a distinctly non-standard flavor: Both increases in taxes and increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on investment spending.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
7269.
Length: Date of creation: Jul 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7269
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
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