Debt-dependent effects of fiscal expansions

Huixin Bi, Wenyi Shen and Shu-Chun Yang

No RWP 16-4, Research Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

Abstract: Economists often postulate that fiscal expansions are less stimulative when government debt is high than when it is low. Empirical evidence, however, is ambiguous. Using a nonlinear neoclassical growth model, we show that the difference in government spending effects between high- and low-debt environments depends on the wealth effect on labor supply and on whether the government uses taxes or spending to retire debt. Because of interrelated state variables, structural VAR estimations conditioning on debt alone can fail to isolate debt-dependent effects. Also, uncertainty on when the government will conduct fiscal consolidations generates wide confidence bands for spending multipliers, further complicating efforts to estimate debt-dependent government spending effects.

Keywords: Dependent fiscal policy effects; Fiscal multipliers; Fiscal uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E62 H30 H60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2016-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg, nep-mac and nep-pbe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

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Journal Article: Debt-dependent effects of fiscal expansions (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedkrw:rwp16-04

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DOI: 10.18651/RWP2016-04

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