A key question that has arisen during recent debates is whether government spending multipliers are larger during times when resources are idle. This paper seeks to shed light on this question by analyzing new quarterly historical data covering multiple large wars and depressions in the U.S. and...

This essay briefly reviews the state of knowledge about the government spending multiplier. Drawing on theoretical work, aggregate empirical estimates from the United States, as well as cross-locality estimates, I assess the likely range of multiplier values for the experiment most relevant to...

This paper investigates the effects of government purchases at the industry level in order to shed light on the transmission mechanism for government spending on the aggregate economy. We create a new panel dataset that matches output and labor variables to industry-specific shifts in government...