(Not) Dancing Together: Monetary Policy Stance and the Government Spending Multiplier

Vincent Belinga and Constant Lonkeng Ngouana ()

No 2015/114, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This paper provides estimates of the government spending multiplier over the monetary policy cycle. We identify government spending shocks as forecast errors of the growth rate of government spending from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) and from the Greenbook record. The state of monetary policy is inferred from the deviation of the U.S. Fed funds rate from the target rate, using a smooth transition function. Applying the local projections method to quarterly U.S. data, we find that the federal government spending multiplier is substantially higher under accommodative than non-accommodative monetary policy. Our estimations also suggest that federal government spending may crowd-in or crowd-out private consumption, depending on the extent of monetary policy accommodation. The latter result reconciles—in a unified framework—apparently contradictory findings in the literature. We discuss the implications of our findings for the ongoing normalization of monetary conditions in advanced economies.

Keywords: WP; fed funds rate; government spending shock; nominal interest rate; Spending multiplier; accommodative monetary policy; local projections; fiscal policy action; state of monetary policy; fiscal policy interaction; Zero lower bound; Real interest rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44
Date: 2015-05-27
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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