This paper investigates the role of informality in affecting the magnitude of the fiscal multiplier in a panel of 141 countries, using the local projections method. We find a strong negative relationship between the degree of informality and the size of the fiscal multiplier. This result holds irrespective of the levels of economic development and institutional quality and is robust to additional country characteristics such as trade, financial openness and exchange rate regime. In a two-sector new- Keynesian model, we rationalize this result by showing that fiscal shocks raise the relative price of official goods, shifting demand towards the informal sector. This reallocation effect increases with the level of informality, because a larger informal sector is associated with a stronger appreciation of relative prices in response to fiscal shocks. Thus, informality raises the size of the unofficial multiplier. A higher degree of non-separability between public and private goods also contributes to rationalize the lower multipliers in high-informality countries.

The recent recession has brought fiscal policy back to the forefront, with economists and policy makers struggling to reach a consensus on highly political issues like tax rates and government spending. At the heart of the debate are fiscal multipliers, whose size and sensitivity determine the power of such policies to influence economic growth. Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis focuses on the effects of fiscal stimuli and increased government spending, with contributions that consider the measurement of the multiplier effect and its size. In the face of uncertainty over the sustainability of recent economic policies, further contributions to this volume discuss the merits of alternate means of debt reduction through decreased government spending or increased taxes. A final section examines how the short-term political forces driving fiscal policy might be balanced with aspects of the long-term planning governing monetary policy. A direct intervention in timely debates, Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis offers invaluable insights about various responses to the recent financial crisis.

We study the effects of federal purchases on firms’ investment using a novel panel dataset that combines federal procurement contracts in the United States with key financial firm-level information. We find that 1 dollar of federal spending increases firms’ capital investment by 7 to 11 cents. The average effect masks heterogeneity: Effects are stronger for firms that face financing constraints and they are close to 0 for unconstrained firms. In line with the financial accelerator model, our findings indicate that the effect of government purchases works through easing firms’ access to external borrowing. Furthermore, industry-level analysis suggests that that the increase in investment at the firm level translates into an industry-wide effect without crowding-out capital investment of other firms in the same industry.

Despite the remarkable progress the literature has made throughout the past years in studying fiscal multipliers, estimates still vary considerably across studies. Partly, estimates differ because of context-specific variables that affect multipliers, but also because of the lack of a standardized framework to calculate and report them, making comparisons among studies hard to make. In this paper, we use a large panel of countries to study how some important methodological details affect the empirical estimates. Focusing on emerging economies, we show how slight changes in the filtering approach of fiscal forecast errors or the accumulation procedure of responses can significantly impact estimates. We emphasize that one of the most important features of estimating multipliers is the endogenous dynamic responses of fiscal variables to fiscal shocks, and therefore we argue against reporting multipliers as simply the output response to exogenous fiscal innovations. Although our baseline results are in line with the previous studies, our standardized framework allow us to make fairer comparisons of multiplier estimates across budgetary items and country income groups.

Empirical (employing the Blanchard-Perotti framework) and modeling (using a country-specific DSGE model) approaches are used to estimate fiscal multipliers by policy instrument for Bolivia, to evaluate possible adjustments in a fiscal consolidation strategy. Multipliers are also estimated using alternative assumptions about the accompanying exchange rate regime and capital mobility, highlighting the importance of the policy mix in determining the impact of fiscal adjustments. The study exploits the DSGE modeling structure to assess this interaction of fiscal and monetary policy in a lower middle-income country under different exchange rate regimes. It finds that expenditure multipliers fall into the range of 1/3 to 2/3, with public investment multipliers slightly higher than government consumption multipliers over longer horizons, and multipliers generally higher under a peg than inflation targeting. Tax multipliers are shown to be about half of expenditure multipliers.

Only a few empirical studies have analyzed the relationship between fiscal multipliers and the underlying state of the economy. This paper investigates this link on a country-by-country basis for the G7 economies (excluding Italy). Our results show that fiscal multipliers differ across countries, calling for a tailored use of fiscal policy. Moreover, the position in the business cycle affects the impact of fiscal policy on output: on average, government spending, and revenue multipliers tend to be larger in downturns than in expansions. This asymmetry has implications for the choice between an upfront fiscal adjustment versus a more gradual approach.

A New Keynesian model with government production, public compensation, and unemployment is fit to U.S. data to study the macroeconomic and fiscal effects of public wage reductions. We find that accounting for the type of government spending is crucial for its macroeconomic implications. Although reductions in public wages and government purchases of goods have similar effects on total output and the fiscal balance, the former can raise private output slightly, in contrast to the substantial contractionary effects of the latter. In addition, the baseline estimation finds that exogenous public wage reductions decrease private wages. Model counterfactuals show that sufficiently rigid nominal private wages can reverse the response of private wages, as the rigidity dampens the labor reallocation effect from the public to private sector that exerts downward pressure on private wages.

Recently, monetary authorities have increasingly focused on implementing policies to ensure price stability and strengthen central bank independence. Simultaneously, in the fiscal area, market development has allowed public debt managers to focus more on cost minimization. This “divorce” of monetary and debt management functions in no way lessens the need for effective coordination of monetary and fiscal policy if overall economic performance is to be optimized and maintained in the long term. This paper analyzes these issues based on a review of the relevant literature and of country experiences from an institutional and operational perspective.

Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.

With the end of the commodity super cycle, Peru’s potential growth has declined, raising questions of what government policies could do to help boost growth, including over the medium-term. Our econometric analysis shows that public investment multipliers have a larger effect on growth than current spending or tax-related stimulus in the short and medium terms. Peru’s low debt and financial savings grants fiscal space for increasing investment spending, which could also entice and complement private investment, provided the former is efficient, fiscally sustainable and complemented by further reforms in public investment management and changes to the decentralization framework.