The Effects of Fiscal Policy Shocks in Bangladesh: An Agnostic Identification Procedure

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects of fiscal shocks in Bangladesh using the sign restriction approach in a Bayesian structural vector autoregression (SVAR) framework. We identify a generic business cycle shock to deal with the endogenous movement of fiscal variables along with a monetary policy shock to absorb the variations due to those shocks. Both unanticipated and anticipated fiscal shocks, that is, government expenditure and revenue shocks, are also identified by minimal sign restrictions. In identifying those shocks, we do not impose any restrictions on the sign of the key variable of interest. We find that private investment and consumption significantly increase due to expansionary government expenditure shock. Such an increase in private consumption is consistent with neo-Keynesian prediction. The fall in output due to the tax increase shock is highly robust. Private consumption also decreases due to a tax increase, although investment does not. The results suggest that fiscal policy, especially tax policy, is more effective than monetary policy in stabilizing output. Moreover, the fiscal authority could increase government expenditure without hurting private investment.