Whoops on multipliers

In How Big (Small?) Are Fiscal Multipliers? (NBER Working Paper No. 16479), co-authors Ethan Ilzetzki, Enrique Mendoza, and Carlos Vegh show that the impact of government fiscal stimulus depends on key country characteristics, including the level of development, the exchange rate regime, openness to trade, and public indebtedness. After analyzing a quarterly dataset on government expenditures for 44 countries (20 high-income and 24 developing) from 1960 to 2007, they conclude that the output effect of an increase in government consumption is larger in industrial than in developing countries. That response -- which is called the fiscal multiplier -- is relatively large in economies operating under a predetermined exchange rate, but it is zero in economies operating under flexible exchange rates. Finally, they conclude that fiscal multipliers are smaller in open economies than in closed economies, and are zero in high-debt countries.

In developing countries, output initially responds negatively to increases in government consumption. Only after a lag of two to four quarters does output rise in response to an increase in government consumption, and the cumulative output response is not statistically different from zero. Furthermore, increases in government consumption are less persistent (dying out after approximately six quarters) in developing countries than in high-income countries. NBER Working Paper

HT Institutional Economics

Matt Nesvisky released the letter, brave soul.