Search results for "spending"
showing 10 items of 73 documents
Household Debt and Fiscal Multipliers
2015
We study the size of government spending multipliers in a general equilibrium model with search and matching frictions in which we allow for different levels of household indebtedness. The main results of the paper are: (a) the presence of impatient households and private debt helps generate government spending multipliers greater than 1; (b) as financial conditions worsen and impatient consumers find it more difficult to borrow (i.e. in a credit crunch), the size of the government spending multiplier falls; (c) conversely, employment, vacancies and unemployment multipliers are larger when access to credit becomes more difficult; and (d) the model explains the observed pattern of responses …
Fiscal multipliers and job-protection regulation
2021
Abstract We study, both theoretically and empirically, how labor market regulation affects fiscal multipliers. We focus on the stringency of employment protection legislation, a prominent source of rigidity in European labor markets. First, using a small-open economy model that features labor-market search-and-matching frictions and nominal rigidities, we show that an increase in government spending has larger output effects when firing costs are lower. The importance of layoff costs for the public spending multiplier is larger in the absence of exchange rate adjustment and in a recession. Second, we confirm these findings empirically using a panel of 26 advanced countries over the period 1…
Was the Oil Sown Evenly? Long-Term Patterns of Regional Inequality in Venezuela (1881–2011)
2020
This chapter presents new estimates for GDP and GDP per capita for the period 1881–2011 for the 23 states and Distrito Capital, which together with the Dependencias Federales, today make up the Republic of Venezuela. Given that the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) does not compile figures either for regional GDP or for the most recent period, calculating and presenting this new evidence is in itself an important contribution to our knowledge of the country’s economic reality. The descriptive evidence on regional income inequality in Venezuela presented in the text shows that its long-term evolution follows an inverted U-shaped curve. However, although inequality today is no greater than it …
Organized crime and public spending: a panel data analysis
2018
The aim of this paper is to investigate, empirically, what components of public spending imply a decreasing effect on organized crime and what components create opportunities for organized crime, discussing also the role of government efficiency. Using a panel data analysis, the results show a strikingly consistent pattern for the EU Member States. Organized crime mainly operates in the distribution of government spending for local public goods and public provision of private services. There is a decreasing effect on organized crime of the public expenditure devoted to education and social policy. Government efficiency in public spending is beneficial to limit the opportunities of the organ…
How Does the Public Spending Affect Technical Efficiency? Some Evidence from 15 European Countries
2019
The relationship between government size and economic growth has been widely debated. Departing from this issue, we provide an empirical analysis of the impact of government size on technical efficiency. The aim of this paper is to estimate by using a True Random Effect model the impact of public sector’s size and of public expenditure components on 15 European countries’ technical efficiency from 1996 to 2011. Using the total public expenditure as a proxy for the government size we estimate simultaneously national optimal production function and technical efficiency model by controlling for income distribution and institutional quality. Our main findings show that the effect of public sect…
Instruments, rules, and household debt: the effects of fiscal policy
2015
In this paper, we look at the interplay between the level of household leverage in the economy and fiscal policy, the latter characterised by different combinations of instruments and rules. When the fiscal rule is defined on lump-sum transfers, government spending or consumption taxes, the impact multipliers of transitory fiscal shocks become substantially amplified in an environment of easy access to credit by impatient consumers, regardless of the primary instruments used. However, when the government reacts to debt deviations by raising distortionary taxes on income, labour or capital, the effects of household debt on the size of the impact output multipliers vanish or even reverse, no …
Testing for Government Intertemporal Solvency: A Smooth Transition Error Correction Model Approach
2001
Applied macroeconomists have tested for the government intertemporal solvency condition by either testing for linear stationarity in the total government deficit series or testing for linear cointegration between total government spending and total tax revenues. A number of authors have focused, in particular, on structural breaks in the government deficit process. In this paper, we use a smooth transition error correction model to test and estimate a shift in the adjustment toward a linear cointegration relationship between the government spending to output ratio and the total tax revenues to output ratio. Estimation results show that government authorities react only to large (in absolute…
Assessing Long-Term Fiscal Developments: A New Approach
2009
We use a new approach to assess long-term fiscal developments. By analyzing the time-varying behaviour of the two components of government spending and revenue - responsiveness and persistence - we are able to infer about the sources of fiscal behaviour. Drawing on quarterly data we estimate recursively these components within a system of government revenue and spending equations using a Three-Stage Least Square method. In this way we track fiscal developments, i.e. possible fiscal deteriorations and/or improvements for eight European Union countries plus the US. Results suggest that positions have not significantly changed for Finland, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the US,…
Threshold Effects in the US Budget Deficit
2003
We contribute to the debate on whether the large U.S. federal budget deficits are sustainable in the long run. We model the U.S. government deficit per capita as a threshold autoregressive process. We find evidence that the U.S. budget deficit is sustainable in the long run and that economic policymakers will intervene to reduce per capita deficit only when it reaches a certain threshold.
Sobre la impertinencia de las políticas austericidas : algunos efectos y reflexiones desde el ámbito de la universidad.
2020
En esta aportación se describirán brevemente cuáles fueron las principales transformaciones en las condiciones de acceso y permanencia en los estudios universitarios que tuvieron lugar a partir de las reformas post- 2012 en un escenario de austeridad en el gasto público. Se parte del más reciente trabajo de investigación de la autora en torno a esta temática y se concluye con el carácter de reajuste clasista a que dichos cambios dieron lugar. En un apartado final se esbozan algunos argumentos que, en el contexto actual de crisis sanitaria y social, refuerzan la valoración de la inoportunidad de ese giro inequitativo en la política universitaria.