The government spending multiplier, fiscal stress, and the zero lower bound

Felix Strobel

VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: The recent sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone was characterized by a monetary policy, which has been constrained by the zero lower bound (ZLB) on nominal interest rates, and several countries, which faced high risk spreads on their sovereign bonds. How is the government spending multiplier affected by such an economic environment? While prominent results in the academic literature point to high government spending multipliers at the ZLB, higher public indebtedness is often associated with small government spending multipliers. I develop a DSGE model with leverage constrained banks that captures both features of this economic environment, the ZLB and fiscal stress. In this model, I analyze the effects of government spending shocks. I find that not only are multipliers large at the ZLB, the presence of fiscal stress can even increase their size. For longer durations of the ZLB, multipliers in this model can be considerably larger than one.

Keywords: Government spending multiplier; Fiscal stress; Zero lower bound; Financial frictions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 E44 E62 H30 H60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-mac and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: The government spending multiplier, fiscal stress and the zero lower bound (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc18:181531

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