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Transmission of government spending shocks in the euro area: Time variation and driving forces

Sebastian Hauptmeier, Jacopo Cimadomo and Markus Kirchner

No 1219, Working Paper Series from European Central Bank

Abstract: 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 structural VAR techniques. The results show that the short-run effectiveness of government spending in stabilizing real GDP and private consumption has increased until the end-1980s but it has decreased thereafter. Moreover, government spending multipliers at longer horizons have declined substantially over the sample period. We also observe a weaker response of real wages and a stronger response of the nominal interest rate to spending shocks. Second, we provide econometric evidence on the driving forces behind the observed time variation of spending multipliers. We find that a higher ratio of credit to households over GDP, a smaller share of government investment and a larger share of public wages over total government spending have led to decreasing contemporaneous multipliers. At the same time, our results indicate that higher government debt-to-GDP ratios have negatively affected long-term multipliers. JEL Classification: C32, E62, H30, H50

Keywords: fiscal transmission mechanism; Government spending shocks; structural change; Structural vector autoregressions; Time-varying parameter models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba and nep-eec
Note: 538998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (141)

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Working Paper: Transmission of Government Spending Shocks in the Euro Area: Time Variation and Driving Forces (2010) Downloads
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