IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc11/48690.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Government Spending: A Disaggregated Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Burgert, Matthias
  • Gomes, Pedro

Abstract

We disaggregate government spending into five macroeconomic-relevant components: average wage, employment, purchases of intermediate goods and services, investment and transfers. We set up a simple RBC model with only search and matching frictions in the labour market to show that these components have different, quantitative and sometimes qualitative, effects on output, private wages and employment, the unemployment rate and private consumption. Using simulated data we show that a VAR with aggregate government spending and output does not identify any type of fiscal shock. We then use the several identification strategies proposed in the literature to understand the effects of different components, for the United States. We find that both the average wage and employment have larger multipliers than purchases of intermediate goods, investment and transfers. They also have distinct effects on private wages and private consumption.

Suggested Citation

  • Burgert, Matthias & Gomes, Pedro, 2011. "The Effects of Government Spending: A Disaggregated Approach," Annual Conference 2011 (Frankfurt, Main): The Order of the World Economy - Lessons from the Crisis 48690, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc11:48690
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/48690/1/VfS_2011_pid_1036.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Perotti, Roberto, 1996. "Fiscal Consolidation in Europe: Composition Matters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 105-110, May.
    2. Valerie A. Ramey, 2011. "Identifying Government Spending Shocks: It's all in the Timing," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 126(1), pages 1-50.
    3. Tenhofen, Jörn & Wolff, Guntram B., 2007. "Does anticipation of government spending matter? Evidence from an expectation augmented VAR," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2007,14, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    4. Evi Pappa, 2009. "The Effects Of Fiscal Shocks On Employment And The Real Wage," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(1), pages 217-244, February.
    5. Gomes, Pedro Maia, 2010. "Fiscal Policy and the Labour Market: The Effects of Public Sector Employment and Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 5321, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    6. Lane, Philip R., 2003. "The cyclical behaviour of fiscal policy: evidence from the OECD," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(12), pages 2661-2675, December.
    7. Merz, Monika, 1995. "Search in the labor market and the real business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 269-300, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Government spending;

    JEL classification:

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

    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:zbw:vfsc11:48690. 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: (ZBW - German National Library of Economics). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.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.