IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dnb/dnbwpp/717.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Fiscal Policy when Planning Horizons are Finite

Author

Listed:
  • Joep Lustenhouwer
  • Kostas Mavromatis

Abstract

How important is the planning horizon of households for the effects of fiscal plans? We address this question through the lens of a New-Keynesian model where households are boundedly rational and plan over a finite number of periods. We show that the planning horizon affects the medium-run cumulative multipliers significantly. Government spending cumulative multipliers increase with the horizon while labor tax cumulative multipliers drop, in absolute terms. In light of the recent debt crisis in the Euro Area, we look at spending cuts and labor income tax hikes. In line with the empirical literature, we find in our benchmark calibration that spending cuts are less recessionary than tax hikes. Looking at the interaction between the planning horizon and the persistence of the fiscal plans, we find that spending cuts become less recessionary while tax hikes more recessionary when the persistence of fiscal plans rise, and that this effect is amplified by shorter planning horizons. Introducing wage stickiness, we show that for very sticky wages, tax hikes become less recessionary than spending cuts, but that intermediate levels of wage stickiness have the opposite effect on fiscal multipliers when planning horizons are finite.

Suggested Citation

  • Joep Lustenhouwer & Kostas Mavromatis, 2021. "The Effects of Fiscal Policy when Planning Horizons are Finite," Working Papers 717, DNB.
  • Handle: RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:717
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.dnb.nl/media/4vwj3ik0/working_paper_no-_717.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2010. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 763-801, June.
    2. Andrew Mountford & Harald Uhlig, 2009. "What are the effects of fiscal policy shocks?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(6), pages 960-992.
    3. Michael B. Devereux, 2011. "Fiscal Deficits, Debt, and Monetary Policy in a Liquidity Trap," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Luis Felipe Céspedes & Roberto Chang & Diego Saravia (ed.),Monetary Policy under Financial Turbulence, edition 1, volume 16, chapter 10, pages 369-410, Central Bank of Chile.
    4. Olivier J. Blanchard & Daniel Leigh, 2013. "Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 117-120, May.
    5. Alberto Alesina & Silvia Ardagna, 2010. "Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes versus Spending," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 24, pages 35-68, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Ardagna, Silvia, 2004. "Fiscal Stabilizations: When Do They Work and Why," Scholarly Articles 2580047, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    7. Alberto Alesina & Carlo A. Favero & Francesco Giavazzi, 2018. "What Do We Know about the Effects of Austerity?," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 524-530, May.
    8. Alberto Alesina & Roberto Perotti, 1995. "Fiscal Expansions and Fiscal Adjustments in OECD Countries," NBER Working Papers 5214, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Olivier Blanchard & Roberto Perotti, 2002. "An Empirical Characterization of the Dynamic Effects of Changes in Government Spending and Taxes on Output," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1329-1368.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gancho Ganchev & Ivan Todorov, 2021. "Taxation, government spending and economic growth: The case of Bulgaria," Journal of Tax Reform, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University, vol. 7(3), pages 255-266.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hommes, Cars & Lustenhouwer, Joep & Mavromatis, Kostas, 2018. "Fiscal consolidations and heterogeneous expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 173-205.
    2. Dell'Erba, Salvatore & Koloskova, Ksenia & Poplawski-Ribeiro, Marcos, 2018. "Medium-term fiscal multipliers during protracted economic contractions," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 35-52.
    3. Ramey, V.A., 2016. "Macroeconomic Shocks and Their Propagation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 71-162, Elsevier.
    4. Kleis, Mischa & Moessinger, Marc-Daniel, 2016. "The long-run effect of fiscal consolidation on economic growth: Evidence from quantitative case studies," ZEW Discussion Papers 16-047, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, revised 2016.
    5. Athanasios Tagkalakis, 2014. "Discretionary fiscal policy and economic activity in Greece," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(4), pages 687-712, November.
    6. Hüseyin ŞEN & Ayşe KAYA, 2017. "Mali Konsolidasyon Büyüme ve İstihdam için Bir Çıpa mı, Mali Tuzak mı? Teorik ve Ampirik Literatür Temelli Bir Analiz," Sosyoekonomi Journal, Sosyoekonomi Society, issue 25(34).
    7. Riera-Crichton, Daniel & Vegh, Carlos A. & Vuletin, Guillermo, 2016. "Tax multipliers: Pitfalls in measurement and identification," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 30-48.
    8. Luca Agnello & Vítor Castro & Ricardo M. Sousa, 2012. "Are there change-points in the likelihood of a fiscal consolidation ending?," NIPE Working Papers 18/2012, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    9. Alari PaulusBy & Francesco Figari & Holly Sutherland, 2017. "The design of fiscal consolidation measures in the European Union: distributional effects and implications for macro-economic recovery," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(3), pages 632-654.
    10. Philip Arestis & Ayşe Kaya & Hüseyin Şen, 2018. "Does fiscal consolidation promote economic growth and employment? Evidence from the PIIGGS countries," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 15(3), pages 289-312, November.
    11. Virkola, Tuomo, 2014. "Exchange Rate Regime, Fiscal Foresight and the Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy in a Small Open Economy," ETLA Reports 20, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    12. Berger, Johannes & Graf, Nikolaus & Strohner, Ludwig & Schuh, Ulrich, 2014. "Auswirkungen von ausgaben- und einnahmenseitigen Konsolidierungen," Research Papers 2, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    13. Mencinger, Jernej & Aristovnik, Aleksander & Verbič, Miroslav, 2017. "Asymmetric effects of fiscal policy in EU and OECD countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 448-461.
    14. Alfredo Arahuetes García & Gonzalo Gómez Bengoechea, 2022. "Back to the Future: Lessons from the 2009–2012 austerity policies for the aftermath of the COVID crisis," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 13(5), pages 751-766, November.
    15. Menzie Chinn, 2013. "fiscal multipliers," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,, Palgrave Macmillan.
    16. Karamysheva, Madina, 2022. "How do fiscal adjustments work? An empirical investigation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    17. Breuer, Christian, 2013. "On the Identification and Macroeconomic Effects of Discretionary Changes in Fiscal Policy," MPRA Paper 52056, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 22 Nov 2013.
    18. Canale, Rosaria Rita & De Simone, Elina & Spagnolo, Nicola, 2021. "Financial markets and fiscal discipline in the Eurozone," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 490-499.
    19. Luca Agnello & Ricardo M. Sousa, 2014. "How Does Fiscal Consolidation Impact on Income Inequality?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(4), pages 702-726, December.
    20. Benjamin Born & Gernot J. Müller & Johannes Pfeifer, 2020. "Does Austerity Pay Off?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(2), pages 323-338, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fiscal policy; Finite planning horizons; Bounded rationality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • 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; Modern Monetary Theory
    • 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; Treasury Policy
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:717. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: DNB (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dnbgvnl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.