IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/elg/rokejn/v0y2012i1p77-92.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Keynesian stimulus versus classical austerity

Author

Listed:
  • Laurence Seidman

    (University of Delaware)

Abstract

Keynesians know that if US austerity advocates had received just a few more votes in the November 2008 election, there would have been no fiscal stimulus or financial rescue in 2009 and the Great Recession would have turned into a second great depression. 'Keynesian' means recognizing the crucial role of aggregate demand, grasping the paradox of saving, advocating fiscal stimulus (tax cuts as well as government spending) in a recession despite the temporary increase in debt that it generates, and recognizing that monetary stimulus alone is inadequate in a severe recession. Contrary to the claims of austerity advocates, fiscal stimulus in general (and tax cuts in particular) did not fail during the Great Recession, but on the contrary helped avert a depression. The Keynesian multiplier is much larger in recession than in prosperity, but empirical studies often estimate its value in prosperity instead of recession. Keynesians should support austerity in prosperity and stimulus in recession. Unless a second Keynesian revolution is launched and succeeds in persuading both the economics profession and the public, the next severe recession may become a depression.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurence Seidman, 2012. "Keynesian stimulus versus classical austerity," Review of Keynesian Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 1(0), pages 77-92.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:rokejn:v:0:y:2012:i:1:p77-92
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.elgaronline.com/view/journals/roke/0-1/roke.2012.01.05.xml
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth Lewis & Laurence Seidman, 2011. "Did the 2008 rebate fail? a response to Taylor and Feldstein," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(2), pages 183-204.
    2. 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.
    3. John B. Taylor, 2009. "The Lack of an Empirical Rationale for a Revival of Discretionary Fiscal Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 550-555, May.
    4. Seidman Laurence, 2010. "Reducing Future Deficits While Stimulating Today's Economy," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 7(3), pages 1-5, August.
    5. Laurence Seidman, 2011. "Great Depression II," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(1), pages 32-53.
    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. Usman W Chohan, 2022. "The return of Keynesianism? Exploring path dependency and ideational change in post-covid fiscal policy [Racial, economic, and health inequality and COVID-19 infection in the United States]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(1), pages 68-82.
    2. Laurence Seidman, 2013. "Stimulus Without Debt," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(6), pages 38-59.
    3. João Ferreira do Amaral & João Carlos Lopes, 2015. "The Trade-off Unemployment Rate/External Deficit: Assessing the Economic Adjustment Program of the Troika (European Commission, ECB and IMF) for Portugal using an Input-Output Approach," Working Papers Department of Economics 2015/04, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    4. Eduardo Garzón Espinosa & Bibiana Medialdea García & Esteban Cruz Hidalgo, 2021. "Fiscal Policy Approaches: An Inquiring Look From The Modern Monetary Theory," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(4), pages 999-1022, October.

    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. Laurence Seidman, 2011. "Keynesian Fiscal Stimulus: What Have We Learned from the Great Recession?," Working Papers 11-11, University of Delaware, Department of Economics.
    2. Laurence Seidman, 2013. "Stimulus Without Debt," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(6), pages 38-59.
    3. Laurence Seidman, 2011. "Great Depression II," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(1), pages 32-53.
    4. Kamhon Kan & Shin-Kun Peng & Ping Wang, 2017. "Understanding Consumption Behavior: Evidence from Consumers' Reaction to Shopping Vouchers," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 137-153, February.
    5. Seidman, Laurence & Lewis, Kenneth, 2015. "Stimulus without debt in a severe recession," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 945-960.
    6. Christopher D. Carroll, 2012. "Implications of Wealth Heterogeneity For Macroeconomics," Economics Working Paper Archive 597, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    7. 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.
    8. Kenneth Lewis & Laurence Seidman, 2011. "Did the 2008 rebate fail? a response to Taylor and Feldstein," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(2), pages 183-204.
    9. Alan J. Auerbach & William G. Gale, 2009. "Activist fiscal policy to stabilize economic activity," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 327-374.
    10. Tony McDonald & Steven Morling, 2011. "The Australian economy and the global downturn, Part 1: Reasons for resilience," Economic Roundup, The Treasury, Australian Government, issue 2, pages 1-31, September.
    11. Kevin A. Hassett, 2009. "Why Fiscal Stimulus is Unlikely to Work," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(1), pages 75-91, May.
    12. Denis Gorea & Oleksiy Kryvtsov & Tamon Takamura, 2016. "Leaning Within a Flexible Inflation-Targeting Framework: Review of Costs and Benefits," Discussion Papers 16-17, Bank of Canada.
    13. Tal Gross & Timothy J. Layton & Daniel Prinz, 2022. "The Liquidity Sensitivity of Healthcare Consumption: Evidence from Social Security Payments," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 175-190, June.
    14. Hayo, Bernd & Neumeier, Florian, 2017. "The (In)validity of the Ricardian equivalence theorem–findings from a representative German population survey," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 162-174.
    15. Sangyup Choi & Davide Furceri & João Tovar Jalles, 2022. "Heterogeneous gains from countercyclical fiscal policy: new evidence from international industry-level data [Optimal investment with costly reversibility]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 773-804.
    16. Robert Kollmann, 2012. "Limited asset market participation and the consumption‐real exchange rate anomaly," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(2), pages 566-584, May.
    17. Claudia R. Sahm & Matthew D. Shapiro & Joel Slemrod, 2015. "Balance-Sheet Households and Fiscal Stimulus: Lessons from the Payroll Tax Cut and Its Expiration," NBER Working Papers 21220, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Jordi Galí & J. David López-Salido & Javier Vallés, 2007. "Understanding the Effects of Government Spending on Consumption," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(1), pages 227-270, March.
    19. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante & Justin Weidner, 2014. "The Wealthy Hand-to-Mouth," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 45(1 (Spring), pages 77-153.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Keynesian stimulus; classical austerity; Keynesian multiplier; Great RecessionJournal: Review of Keynesian Economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian; Modern Monetary Theory

    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:elg:rokejn:v:0:y:2012:i:1:p77-92. 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: Phillip Thompson (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elgaronline.com/roke .

    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.