The output multiplier turns negative before a deficit spending program expires. We show the generality of this unpleasant finding for the standard real business cycle model. We then calibrate an extended model for the US and demonstrate how fiscal stimulus slows down economic recovery from...

In 2008, governments in many countries embarked on large fiscal expenditure programmes, with the intention to support the economy and prevent a more serious recession. In this study, the overall impact of a substantial increase in fiscal expenditure is considered by providing a novel analysis of...

Most of the discussion about fiscal stimulus focuses on the multiplier of government spending on impact. In this paper we shift the focus to the multiplier at the end, i.e. to the period in which a deficit spending program terminates. We show that recent time series analyses as well as economic...

Through disaggregating public expenditures by economic functions this paper offers a new perspective on the existence and effectiveness of electorally motivated expenditure policy. The aim of the paper is to provide more detailed information on the specific expenditure categories by which...

In the 1970s, taxation of "windfall" profits from primary products and intervention in trade and production has tempted governments into expansionary fiscal policies while stifling the private sector and depressing growth. However, the experience of the recent coffee boom has so far been more...

In this paper, I estimate a structural panel vector autoregression to study the consequences of changes in U.S. state government fiscal policies for local economic activity in the short-term. My main result is that the state-level spending multiplier is relatively small and the tax multiplier...

The literature on systematic fiscal policy and macroeconomic performance in industrialized countries is large but fragmented. Based on a broad overview of that literature, several patterns emerge. The empirical literature points toward strongly anticyclical policy, which consists of procyclical...

This paper provides new evidence on the effects of government spending shocks and the fiscal transmission mechanism in the euro area for the period 1980-2008. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we investigate changes in the macroeconomic impact of government spending shocks using time-varying...

We investigate empirically the effect of government purchases on unemployment in 20 OECD countries, for the period 1960-2007. Compared to earlier studies we use a data set with more variation in unemployment, and which allows for controlling for a host of factors that influence the effect of...

This paper examines whether fiscal illusion can help to explain the behavior of federal government expenditures in Brazil during period 1990-2011. The analyses is based on a median voter model that admits that the degree of tax visibility may affect the individual’s perception of his tax...