The Macroeconomic Consequences of Green and Brown Government Spending

This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of green and brown government spend-ing using public procurement data, focusing on how spending composition reshapes the energy sector. Classifying around 171,000 contracts by product codes, we con-struct a quarterly panel of green and brown procurement for ten Eurozone economies (2011–2023). We identify spending shocks using the institutional timing of contract award announcements, which is plausibly orthogonal to the business cycle, and es-timate impulse responses with panel local projections. Green and brown procure-ment have near mirror-image effects on the energy sector: green procurement lowers energy prices, reduces energy-sector output, and cuts oil import dependence, while brown procurement raises energy prices and depresses innovation, especially green patenting. These differences extend to aggregate output: the cumulative GDP multi-plier of green procurement is about 0.7 on impact and exceeds 1 within one and two years, whereas the brown multiplier remains statistically indistinguishable from zero over the first two years.