On the usefulness of government spending in the EU area

Luigi Marattin and Simone Salotti

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2011, vol. 40, issue 6, 780-795

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of government spending on private consumption and investment in the European Union (EU). A certain consensus has been reached on the expansionary Keynesian effects of fiscal impulses on the economic activity. However, the existing empirical literature has concentrated on few countries, mostly outside the EU. We check the validity of this result for the EU area using annual data and a panel vector auto-regression approach, with particular attention being paid to robustness across alternative identification assumptions based on Cholesky orderings. Our results show that shocks to public spending positively affect private consumption and investment. According to our baseline estimate, a 1% increase in public current expenditure produces a 0.24% impact rise in private consumption, and a 0.41% impact rise in private investment. The effects are substantial, and die out slowly in the case of private consumption (the cumulative impact amounts to +0.56% after 3years), but much faster in the case of private investment. A further disaggregation between wage and non-wage components reveals that public salaries have a relatively stronger stimulating role. This is not due to the different weights on GDP of the two components, which have comparable values in our sample.

Keywords: Fiscal policy; Private consumption; Panel vector autoregression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 E62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Related works:
Working Paper: On the usefulness of government spending in the EU area (2009)
Working Paper: On the usefulness of government spending in the EU area (2009)
Working Paper: On the usefulness of government spending in the EU area (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:40:y:2011:i:6:p:780-795

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2011.08.018

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