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The Fiscal Multiplier

Author

Listed:
  • Kurt Mitman

    (Stockholm University)

  • Iourii Manovskii

    (University of Pennsylvania)

  • Marcus Hagedorn

    (University of Oslo)

Abstract

This paper studies the size of the fiscal multiplier in a model with incomplete markets and rigid prices and wages. Allowing for incomplete markets instead of complete markets---the prevalent assumption in the literature---comes with two advantages. First, the incomplete markets model delivers a realistic distribution of the marginal propensity to consume across the population, whereas all households counterfactually behave according to the permanent income hypothesis if markets are complete. Second, in our model the response of prices, output, consumption and employment is uniquely determined by fiscal policy for any monetary policy including the zero-lower bound (ZLB) as opposed to most of the previous literature, where an infinite number of equilibria exists, leaving the researcher to arbitrarily pick one. Our preliminary findings indicate that the impact multiplier is quite large between 2 and 3 depending on whether tax or deficit financing is used and increase to values above 3 in a liquidity trap.

Suggested Citation

  • Kurt Mitman & Iourii Manovskii & Marcus Hagedorn, 2017. "The Fiscal Multiplier," 2017 Meeting Papers 1383, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed017:1383
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D52 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Incomplete Markets
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • 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

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