IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

The impact of government debt on private consumption in OECD countries

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Berben, Robert-Paul
  • Brosens, Teunis

Abstract

Using data for 17 OECD countries from 1983 to 2003, this paper establishes a non-linear relationship between private consumption and the level of government debt. In countries with a high level of government debt, a fiscal expansion is partly crowded out by a fall in private consumption. In contrast, in low debt countries, private consumption is insensitive to changes in government debt. This means that fiscal policy will be less effective in stabilising business cycle fluctuations at higher levels of government debt.

(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-1765(06)00230-8
Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Economics Letters.

Volume (Year): 94 (2007)
Issue (Month): 2 (February)
Pages: 220-225

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:94:y:2007:i:2:p:220-225
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
  • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy
  • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Elmendorf, Douglas W. & Gregory Mankiw, N., 1999. "Government debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics,in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1615-1669 Elsevier.
  2. Linnemann, Ludger & Schabert, Andreas, 2004. "Can fiscal spending stimulate private consumption?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 173-179, February.
  3. Nicholas S. Souleles & Jonathan A. Parker & David S. Johnson, 2006. "Household Expenditure and the Income Tax Rebates of 2001," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1589-1610, December.
  4. Choi, In, 2001. "Unit root tests for panel data," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 249-272, April.
  5. Bertola, Giuseppe & Drazen, Allan, 1993. "Trigger Points and Budget Cuts: Explaining the Effects of Fiscal Austerity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 11-26, March.
  6. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
  7. Martin Lettau, 2001. "Consumption, Aggregate Wealth, and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 815-849, 06.
  8. Lorenzo Pozzi & Freddy Heylen & Maarten Dossche, 2004. "Government Debt and Excess Sensitivity of Private Consumption: Estimates from OECD Countries," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(4), pages 618-633, October.
  9. Yongcheol Shin & Ron P Smith & Mohammad Hashem Pesaran, 1998. "Pooled Mean Group Estimation of Dynamic Heterogeneous Panels," ESE Discussion Papers 16, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
  10. Alexander Ludwig & Torsten M Sloek, 2002. "The Impact of Changes in Stock Prices and House Priceson Consumption in OECD Countries," IMF Working Papers 02/1, International Monetary Fund.
  11. Luiz de Mello & Per Mathis Kongsrud & Robert W. R. Price, 2004. "Saving Behaviour and the Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 397, OECD Publishing.
  12. Roberto Ricciuti, 2003. "Assessing Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 55-78, February.
  13. Sutherland, Alan, 1997. "Fiscal crises and aggregate demand: can high public debt reverse the effects of fiscal policy?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 147-162, August.
  14. Becker, Torbjorn, 1997. "An investigation of Ricardian equivalence in a common trends model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 405-431, August.
  15. Im, Kyung So & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Shin, Yongcheol, 2003. "Testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 53-74, July.
  16. Vincent Hogan, 2004. "Expansionary Fiscal Contractions? Evidence from Panel Data," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 106(4), pages 647-659, December.
  17. G. Peersman & L. Pozzi, 2004. "Determinants of consumption smoothing," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 04/231, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
  18. Pedroni, Peter, 1999. " Critical Values for Cointegration Tests in Heterogeneous Panels with Multiple Regressors," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 61(0), pages 653-670, Special I.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as
in new window


Cited by:

  1. Vansteenkiste, Isabel & Nickel, Christiane, 2008. "Fiscal policies, the current account and Ricardian equivalence," Working Paper Series 935, European Central Bank.
  2. Ekkehart Schlicht, 2006. "Public Debt As Private Wealth: Some Equilibrium Considerations," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 494-520, November.
  3. Jacopo Cimadomo & Sebastian Hauptmeier & Sergio Sola, 2011. "Identifying the Effects of Government Spending Shocks with and without Expected Reversal: an Approach Based on U.S. Real-Time Data," IHEID Working Papers 12-2011, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
  4. Andres Frick & Jochen Hartwig & Michael Graff & Boriss Siliverstovs, 2009. "Diskretionäre Fiskalpolitik: Pro und Kontra," KOF Analysen, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich, vol. 3(2), pages 25-43, June.
  5. Sergio Sola, 2013. "Temporary and Persistent Fiscal Policy Shocks," IHEID Working Papers 06-2013, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
  6. Cho, Dooyeon & Rhee, Dong-Eun, 2013. "Nonlinear effects of government debt on private consumption: Evidence from OECD countries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 121(3), pages 504-507.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:94:y:2007:i:2:p:220-225. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.