On Public Spending and Unions

Fernando Broner, Alberto Martin and Jaume Ventura ()
Additional contact information
Jaume Ventura: https://www.upf.edu/web/econ/faculty/-/asset_publisher/6aWmmXf28uXT/persona/id/3418977

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: We analyze the conduct of fiscal policy in a financially integrated union in the presence of financial frictions. Frictions create a wedge between the return to investment and the union interest rate. This leads to an over-spending externality. While the social cost of spending is the return to investment, governments care mostly about the (depressed) interest rate they face. In other words, the crowding out effects of public spending are partly "exported" to the rest of the union. We argue that it may be hard for the union to deal with this externality through the design of fiscal rules, which are bound to be shaped by the preferences of the median country and not by efficiency considerations. We also analyze how this overspending externality - and the union's ability to deal with it effectively - changes when the union is financially integrated with the rest of the world. Finally, we extend our model by introducing a zero lower bound on interest rates and show that, if financial frictions are severe enough, the union is pushed into a liquidity trap and the direction of the spending externality is reversed. At such times, fiscal rules that are appropriate during normal times might backfire.

Keywords: public spending; crowding out; financial frictions; fiscal union; spending externalities; fiscal coordination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E62 F32 F34 F36 F41 F42 F45 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-02, Revised 2020-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-mac, nep-mon and nep-opm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/1715.pdf Whole Paper (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upf:upfgen:1715

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).