IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lsa/wpaper/wpc21.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Re-Evaluating The Keynesian Multiplier: Critiques And Evidence From Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Enrico Gabriele

    (LUMSA University)

Abstract

This paper starts from Keynes’ General Theory to demonstrate the existence of a non-linear Keynesian multiplier on the grounds of cross-country data. Thus, we prove the effectiveness of short-run countercyclical exogenous stimuli during downturns. The role of fiscal spending is discussed in light of different schools of thought, including the well-known “expansionary fiscal contraction” theory. Moreover, we examine the European fiscal rules of convergence – aimed to sovereign debt sustainability – that affect the size of “fiscal space”. Empirical data from several Eurozone countries provide evidence of traditional multipliers. Furthermore, the Greek economy displays a non-linear case of multiplier. This leads to rejecting the assumption of a weak Keynesian setting, which supported instead the IMF-backed fiscal contraction.

Suggested Citation

  • Enrico Gabriele, 2017. "Re-Evaluating The Keynesian Multiplier: Critiques And Evidence From Europe," CERBE Working Papers wpC21, CERBE Center for Relationship Banking and Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:lsa:wpaper:wpc21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.lumsa.it/wp/wpC21.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Enrique G. Mendoza & Linda L. Tesar, 2012. "The Finnish Great Depression: From Russia with Love," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1619-1644, June.
    2. Hall, Robert E, 1978. "Stochastic Implications of the Life Cycle-Permanent Income Hypothesis: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(6), pages 971-987, December.
    3. Philippine Cour & Eric Dubois & Selma Mahfouz & Jean Pisani-Ferry, 1996. "The Cost of Fiscal Retrenchment Revisited: how Strong is the Evidence?," Working Papers 1996-16, CEPII research center.
    4. Dolls, Mathias & Fuest, Clemens & Peichl, Andreas, 2012. "Automatic stabilizers and economic crisis: US vs. Europe," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 279-294.
    5. Ray Barrell & Dawn Holland & Ian Hurst, 2012. "Fiscal Consolidation: Part 2. Fiscal Multipliers and Fiscal Consolidations," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 933, OECD Publishing.
    6. Pasinetti, Luigi L, 1998. "The Myth (or Folly) of the 3 Percent Deficit/GDP Maastricht 'Parameter.'," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 22(1), pages 103-116, January.
    7. Briotti, Maria Gabriella, 2005. "Economic reactions to public finance consolidation: a survey of the literature," Occasional Paper Series 38, European Central Bank.
    8. Francesco Giavazzi & Marco Pagano, 1990. "Can Severe Fiscal Contractions Be Expansionary? Tales of Two Small European Countries," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1990, Volume 5, pages 75-122, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Roberto Perotti, 1999. "Fiscal Policy in Good Times and Bad," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(4), pages 1399-1436.
    10. Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 2011. "When Is the Government Spending Multiplier Large?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(1), pages 78-121.
    11. Christopher Erceg & Jesper Lindé, 2014. "Is There A Fiscal Free Lunch In A Liquidity Trap?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 73-107, February.
    12. Pete Richardson & Laurence Boone & Claude Giorno & Mara Meacci & David Rae & David Turner, 2000. "The Concept, Policy Use and Measurement of Structural Unemployment: Estimating a Time Varying NAIRU Across 21 OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 250, OECD Publishing.
    13. Paul Davidson, 2010. "Making dollars and sense of the U.S. government debt," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(4), pages 661-666, July.
    14. Alan J. Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2012. "Fiscal Multipliers in Recession and Expansion," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis, pages 63-98, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Nicoletta Batini & Luc Eyraud & Lorenzo Forni & Anke Weber, 2014. "Fiscal Multipliers; Size, Determinants, and Use in Macroeconomic Projections," IMF Technical Notes and Manuals 14/04, International Monetary Fund.
    16. Alberto Alesina & Roberto Perotti, 1997. "Fiscal Adjustments in OECD Countries: Composition and Macroeconomic Effects," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 44(2), pages 210-248, June.
    17. Maria Gabriella Briotti, 2005. "Economic reactions to public finance consolidation - a survey of the literature," Occasional Paper Series 38, European Central Bank.
    18. Francesca D'Auria & Cécile Denis & Karel Havik & Kieran Mc Morrow & Christophe Planas & Rafal Raciborski & Werner Roger & Alessandro Rossi, 2010. "The production function methodology for calculating potential growth rates and output gaps," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 420, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    19. Ardagna, Silvia, 2004. "Fiscal Stabilizations: When Do They Work and Why," Scholarly Articles 2580047, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    20. J. Bradford DeLong & Lawrence H. Summers, 2012. "Fiscal Policy in a Depressed Economy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 44(1 (Spring), pages 233-297.
    21. Nicoletta Batini & Mr. Luc Eyraud & Lorenzo Forni & Miss Anke Weber, 2014. "Fiscal Multipliers: Size, Determinants, and Use in Macroeconomic Projections," IMF Technical Notes and Manuals 2014/004, International Monetary Fund.
    22. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1985. "Debt, Deficits, and Finite Horizons," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 223-247, April.
    23. Ardagna, Silvia, 2004. "Fiscal stabilizations: When do they work and why," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 1047-1074, October.
    24. J. Bradford DeLong & Lawrence H. Summers, 2012. "Fiscal Policy in a Depressed Economy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 43(1 (Spring), pages 233-297.
    25. Giovanni Callegari & Mr. Giovanni Melina & Nicoletta Batini, 2012. "Successful Austerity in the United States, Europe and Japan," IMF Working Papers 2012/190, International Monetary Fund.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Andrea Boitani & Salvatore Perdichizzi, 2018. "Public Expenditure Multipliers in recessions. Evidence from the Eurozone," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def068, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    2. Ant�nio Afonso, 2010. "Expansionary fiscal consolidations in Europe: new evidence," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(2), pages 105-109, January.
    3. Nicoletta Batini & Mr. Luc Eyraud & Miss Anke Weber, 2014. "A Simple Method to Compute Fiscal Multipliers," IMF Working Papers 2014/093, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Andrea Boitani & Salvatore Perdichizzi & Chiara Punzo, 2022. "Nonlinearities and expenditure multipliers in the Eurozone [Tales of fiscal adjustment]," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 31(2), pages 552-575.
    5. Piotr Ciżkowicz & Grzegorz Parosa & Andrzej Rzońca, 2022. "Fiscal tensions and risk premium," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 49(3), pages 833-896, August.
    6. Thomas Warmedinger & Cristina Checherita-Westphal & Pablo Hernández de Cos, 2015. "Fiscal Multipliers and Beyond," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 215(4), pages 139-168, December.
    7. Ibrar Hussain & Jawad Hussain & Arshad Ali & Shabir Ahmad, 2021. "A Dynamic Analysis of the Impact of Fiscal Adjustment on Economic Growth: Evidence From Pakistan," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(2), pages 21582440211, June.
    8. Luis Felipe Céspedes & Jordi Galí, 2013. "Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Performance: An Overview," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Luis Felipe Céspedes & Jordi Galí (ed.),Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Performance, edition 1, volume 17, chapter 1, pages 01-25, Central Bank of Chile.
    9. 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.
    10. Òscar Jordà & Alan M. Taylor, 2016. "The Time for Austerity: Estimating the Average Treatment Effect of Fiscal Policy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(590), pages 219-255, February.
    11. Nicolas Carnot & Francisco de Castro, 2015. "The Discretionary Fiscal Effort: An Assessment of Fiscal Policy and Its Output Effect," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 215(4), pages 63-94, December.
    12. Sergio Sola, 2013. "Temporary and Persistent Fiscal Policy Shocks," IHEID Working Papers 06-2013, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    13. Salvatore Perdichizzi, 2017. "Estimating Fiscal multipliers in the Eurozone. A Nonlinear Panel Data Approach," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def058, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    14. Alessandro Piergallini, 2021. "Is fiscal austerity really self‐defeating?," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(6), pages 1228-1260, December.
    15. Angela Köppl & Margit Schratzenstaller, 2022. "Macroeconomic Effects of Green Recovery Programmes. Conceptual Framing and a Review of the Empirical Literature," WIFO Working Papers 646, WIFO.
    16. Marco Bernardini & Selien De Schryder & Gert Peersman, 2020. "Heterogeneous Government Spending Multipliers in the Era Surrounding the Great Recession," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(2), pages 304-322, May.
    17. Bofinger, Peter & Buch, Claudia M. & Feld, Lars P. & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Wieland, Volker, 2013. "Gegen eine rückwärtsgewandte Wirtschaftspolitik. Jahresgutachten 2013/14 [Against a backward-looking economic policy. Annual Report 2013/14]," Annual Economic Reports / Jahresgutachten, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, volume 127, number 201314.
    18. António Afonso, 2007. "Expansionary fiscal consolidations in Europe: part of conventional wisdom?," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2006 50, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    19. 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.
    20. Roumeen Islam, 2017. "Growth after Crisis in Europe: An Interdependence of Macroeconomic and Structural Policies," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 11(2), pages 19-62, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Keynesian Multiplier; Expansionary Fiscal Contraction; Euro Sovereign Crisis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E17 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination
    • 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
    • E65 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes

    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:lsa:wpaper:wpc21. 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: Pierluigi Murro (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/celumit.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.