IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/12-190.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Successful Austerity in the United States, Europe and Japan

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni Callegari
  • Giovanni Melina
  • Nicoletta Batini

Abstract

The output effects of 2009 fiscal expansions have been hotly debated. But the discussion of fiscal multipliers is even more relevant now that several European countries have had to quickly retract their stimulus measures in an effort to regain market confidence. Using regime-switching VARs we estimate the impact of fiscal adjustment on the United States, Europe and Japan allowing for fiscal multipliers to vary across recessions and booms. We also estimate ex ante probabilities of recessions derived in association with different-sized and different types of consolidation shocks (expenditure- versus tax-based). We use these estimates to understand how consolidations should be designed to be most effective in terms of permanently and rapidly reducing a country’s debt-to-GDP ratio. The main finding is that smooth and gradual consolidations are to be preferred to frontloaded or aggressive consolidations, especially for economies in recession facing high risk premia on public debt, because sheltering growth is key to the success of fiscal consolidation in these cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Callegari & Giovanni Melina & Nicoletta Batini, 2012. "Successful Austerity in the United States, Europe and Japan," IMF Working Papers 12/190, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:12/190
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=26116
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:nbr:nberch:13342 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Leduc, Sylvain & Sill, Keith & Stark, Tom, 2007. "Self-fulfilling expectations and the inflation of the 1970s: Evidence from the Livingston Survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 433-459, March.
    3. Rudiger Ahrend & Pietro Catte & Robert Price, 2006. "Interactions Between Monetary and Fiscal Policy: How Monetary Conditions Affect Fiscal Consolidation," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 521, OECD Publishing.
    4. Shafik Hebous, 2011. "The Effects Of Discretionary Fiscal Policy On Macroeconomic Aggregates: A Reappraisal," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 674-707, September.
    5. repec:spr:empeco:v:54:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s00181-016-1210-5 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Daniel Leigh & Andrea Pescatori & Jaime Guajardo, 2011. "Expansionary Austerity New International Evidence," IMF Working Papers 11/158, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Karel Mertens & Morten Overgaard Ravn, 2011. "Understanding the Aggregate Effects of Anticipated and Unanticipated Tax Policy Shocks," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(1), pages 27-54, January.
    8. Florin O. Bilbiie & André Meier & Gernot J. Müller, 2008. "What Accounts for the Changes in U.S. Fiscal Policy Transmission?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(7), pages 1439-1470, October.
    9. Eric Leeper & Todd B. Walker & Susan Shu-Chun Yang, 2009. "Government Investment And Fiscal Stimulus In The Short And Long Runs," CAEPR Working Papers 2009-011, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    10. Joan Paredes & Diego J. Pedregal & Javier J. Pérez, 2009. "A quarterly fiscal database for the euro area based on intra-annual fiscal information," Working Papers 0935, Banco de España;Working Papers Homepage.
    11. Cogan, John F. & Cwik, Tobias & Taylor, John B. & Wieland, Volker, 2010. "New Keynesian versus old Keynesian government spending multipliers," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 281-295, March.
    12. Caldara, Dario & Kamps, Christophe, 2008. "What are the effects of fiscal policy shocks? A VAR-based comparative analysis," Working Paper Series 877, European Central Bank.
    13. Calza, Alessandro & Sousa, João, 2005. "Output and inflation responses to credit shocks: are there threshold effects in the euro area?," Working Paper Series 481, European Central Bank.
    14. Alan J. Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2012. "Measuring the Output Responses to Fiscal Policy," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 1-27, May.
    15. Chernozhukov, Victor & Hong, Han, 2003. "An MCMC approach to classical estimation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(2), pages 293-346, August.
    16. Leeper, Eric M. & Walker, Todd B. & Yang, Shu-Chun S., 2010. "Government investment and fiscal stimulus," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(8), pages 1000-1012, November.
    17. Robert E. Hall, 2009. "By How Much Does GDP Rise If the Government Buys More Output?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 40(2 (Fall)), pages 183-249.
    18. António Afonso & Jaromír Baxa & Michal Slavík, 2018. "Fiscal developments and financial stress: a threshold VAR analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 395-423, March.
    19. Raffaella Basile & Bruno Chiarini & Elisabetta Marzano, 2011. "Can we Rely upon Fiscal Policy Estimates in Countries with Unreported Production of 15 Per Cent (or more) of GDP?," CESifo Working Paper Series 3521, CESifo Group Munich.
    20. Markus Kirchner & Jacopo Cimadomo & Sebastian Hauptmeier, 2010. "Transmission of Government Spending Shocks in the Euro Area: Time Variation and Driving Forces," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 10-021/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    21. Anja Baum & Marcos Poplawski Ribeiro & Anke Weber, 2012. "Fiscal Multipliers and the State of the Economy," IMF Working Papers 12/286, International Monetary Fund.
    22. Koop, Gary & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Potter, Simon M., 1996. "Impulse response analysis in nonlinear multivariate models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 119-147, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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:imf:imfwpa:12/190. 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: (Jim Beardow) or (Hassan Zaidi) The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Hassan Zaidi to update the entry or send us the correct email address. General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.