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Fiscal Multipliers in Recessions

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  • Matthew Canzoneri
  • Fabrice Collard
  • Harris Dellas
  • Behzad Diba

Abstract

The Great Recession, and the fiscal response to it, has revived interest in the size of fiscal multipliers. Standard business cycle models have difficulties generating multipliers greater than one. And they also fail to produce any significant asymmetry in the size of the multipliers over the business cycle. In this paper we employ a variant of the Curdia-Woodford model of costly financial intermediation to show that fiscal multipliers are strongly countercyclical. In particular, they can take values exceeding two during recessions, declining to values below one during expansions.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Canzoneri & Fabrice Collard & Harris Dellas & Behzad Diba, 2012. "Fiscal Multipliers in Recessions," Diskussionsschriften dp1204, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    • Handle: RePEc:ube:dpvwib:dp1204
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Government Spending Multipliers; Cyclicality; Financial Frictions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents

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