IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/19911.html

Fiscal Multipliers in Japan

Author

Listed:
  • Alan J. Auerbach
  • Yuriy Gorodnichenko

Abstract

In this paper, we estimate government purchase multipliers for Japan, following the approach used previously for a panel of OECD countries (Auerbach and Gorodnichenko, 2013). This approach allows multipliers to vary smoothly according to the state of the economy and uses real-time forecast data to purge policy innovations of their predictable components. For a sample period extending from 1960 to 2012, estimates for Japan are quite consistent with those previously estimated for the OECD as well as those estimated using a slightly different methodology for the United States (Auerbach and Gorodnichenko, 2012). However, estimates based only on more recent observations are less stable and provide weaker support for the effectiveness of government purchases at stimulating economic activity, particularly in recession, although cyclical patterns in Japan make the dating of recessions a challenge.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan J. Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2014. "Fiscal Multipliers in Japan," NBER Working Papers 19911, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19911
    Note: EFG PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19911.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul R. Krugman, 1998. "It's Baaack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(2), pages 137-206.
    2. Alan J Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2016. "Effects of Fiscal Shocks in a Globalized World," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 64(1), pages 177-215, May.
    3. Òscar Jordà, 2005. "Estimation and Inference of Impulse Responses by Local Projections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 161-182, March.
    4. 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.
    5. Kuttner, Kenneth N. & Posen, Adam S., 2002. "Fiscal Policy Effectiveness in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 536-558, December.
    6. Alan J. Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2013. "Corrigendum: Measuring the Output Responses to Fiscal Policy," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 320-322, August.
    7. Ricardo J. Caballero & Takeo Hoshi & Anil K. Kashyap, 2008. "Zombie Lending and Depressed Restructuring in Japan," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1943-1977, December.
    8. J. Stephen Ferris, 2013. "Fiscal policy," Chapters, in: William F. Shughart II & Laura Razzolini & Michael Reksulak (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Public Choice, Second Edition, chapter 16, pages 260-283, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Erratum to "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?"," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(7), pages 1849-1849, October.
    10. Olivier Blanchard & Roberto Perotti, 2002. "An Empirical Characterization of the Dynamic Effects of Changes in Government Spending and Taxes on Output," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1329-1368.
    11. Doi, Takero & Hoshi, Takeo & Okimoto, Tatsuyoshi, 2011. "Japanese government debt and sustainability of fiscal policy," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 414-433.
    12. Valerie A. Ramey, 2011. "Can Government Purchases Stimulate the Economy?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(3), pages 673-685, September.
    13. Kenneth N. Kuttner & Adam S. Posen, 2002. "Passive Savers and Fiscal Policy Effectiveness in Japan," Working Paper Series WP02-2, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    14. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Michael Woodford, 2003. "The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(1), pages 139-235.
    15. Alan J. Auerbach & Maurice Obstfeld, 2005. "The Case for Open-Market Purchases in a Liquidity Trap," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 110-137, March.
    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. Wataru Miyamoto & Thuy Lan Nguyen & Dmitriy Sergeyev, 2018. "Government Spending Multipliers under the Zero Lower Bound: Evidence from Japan," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 247-277, July.
    3. 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).
    4. Mario Alloza, 2014. "Is Fiscal Policy More Effective in Uncertain Times or During Recessions?," Discussion Papers 1631, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM), revised Oct 2016.
    5. Regis Barnichon & Davide Debortoli & Christian Matthes, 2022. "Understanding the Size of the Government Spending Multiplier: It’s in the Sign," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(1), pages 87-117.
    6. Luiz de Mello, 2013. "What Can Fiscal Policy Do in the Current Recession? A Review of Recent Literature and Policy Options," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 204(1), pages 113-139, March.
    7. Keränen, Henri & Kuusi, Tero, 2016. "The EU’s Fiscal Targets and Their Economic Impact in Finland," ETLA Working Papers 33, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    8. Sylvain Leduc & Daniel J. Wilson, 2012. "Should transportation spending be included in a stimulus program? a review of the literature," Working Paper Series 2012-15, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    9. Eric Sims & Jonathan Wolff, 2018. "The Output And Welfare Effects Of Government Spending Shocks Over The Business Cycle," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 59(3), pages 1403-1435, August.
    10. Marco Bernardini & Gert Peersman, 2018. "Private debt overhang and the government spending multiplier: Evidence for the United States," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(4), pages 485-508, June.
    11. Morita, Hiroshi, 2022. "On the relationship between fiscal multipliers and population aging in Japan: Theory and empirics," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    12. Patrick Blagrave & Giang Ho & Ksenia Koloskova & Mr. Esteban Vesperoni, 2017. "Fiscal Spillovers: The Importance of Macroeconomic and Policy Conditions in Transmission," IMF Spillover Notes 2017/002, International Monetary Fund.
    13. Boubaker, Sabri & Nguyen, Duc Khuong & Paltalidis, Nikos, 2018. "Fiscal policy interventions at the zero lower bound," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 297-314.
    14. Mitsuru Katagiri & Yusuke Oh & Yasutaka Ogawa & Nao Sudo & Takeki Sunakawa, 2024. "On the Interaction between Monetary and Fiscal Policy: Developments in Macroeconomics since the Global Financial Crisis," IMES Discussion Paper Series 24-E-12, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    15. Gunter, Samara & Riera-Crichton, Daniel & Vegh, Carlos A. & Vuletin, Guillermo, 2021. "Non-linear effects of tax changes on output: The role of the initial level of taxation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    16. Alan J Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2016. "Effects of Fiscal Shocks in a Globalized World," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 64(1), pages 177-215, May.
    17. Ramey, V.A., 2016. "Macroeconomic Shocks and Their Propagation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 71-162, Elsevier.
    18. Felix Reichling & Charles Whalen, 2015. "The Fiscal Multiplier and Economic Policy Analysis in the United States: Working Paper 2015-02," Working Papers 49925, Congressional Budget Office.
    19. Evans, George W. & Guse, Eran & Honkapohja, Seppo, 2008. "Liquidity traps, learning and stagnation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(8), pages 1438-1463, November.
    20. Sebastian Gechert & Ansgar Rannenberg, 2014. "Are Fiscal Multipliers Regime-Dependent? A Meta Regression Analysis," IMK Working Paper 139-2014, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

    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:nbr:nberwo:19911. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.