IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc13/79826.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Public Investments Increase Employment in a Recession? Evidence from Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Buchheim, Lukas
  • Watzinger, Martin

Abstract

In 2009, Germany invested 15.4 Billion Euro in infrastructure to avert the looming recession. In this study, we evaluate whether the German stimulus program was successful in limiting the impact of the crisis on the job market. We exploit exogenous cross-sectional variation to identify the casual effect of stimulus investment on the change in unemployment on the county level. By law, 65 percent of the stimulus funds were earmarked for the renovation of existing school buildings. Thus a large part of all investment was predetermined by the number and size of schools in a county which are plausibly exogenous to local economic conditions. Thus a large part of all investment was predetermined by the number and size of schools in a county which are plausibly exogenous to local economic conditions during the crisis. This opens up the possibility to use the number of schools and students as instrumental variables for stimulus investment. Our IV-estimates indicate that the stimulus program was successful in reducing the number of unemployed: On average, one job was created for every 44,000 Euro spent. This result is in line with estimates for the effectiveness of the US stimulus program. We validate our IV strategy with extensive falsification exercises and various robustness checks.

Suggested Citation

  • Buchheim, Lukas & Watzinger, Martin, 2013. "Do Public Investments Increase Employment in a Recession? Evidence from Germany," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79826, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc13:79826
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/79826/1/VfS_2013_pid_279.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel J. Wilson, 2012. "Fiscal Spending Jobs Multipliers: Evidence from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 251-282, August.
    2. Antonio Acconcia & Giancarlo Corsetti & Saverio Simonelli, 2014. "Mafia and Public Spending: Evidence on the Fiscal Multiplier from a Quasi-experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 2185-2209, July.
    3. Jeffrey Clemens & Stephen Miran, 2012. "Fiscal Policy Multipliers on Subnational Government Spending," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 46-68, May.
    4. Alan J. Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2012. "Fiscal Multipliers in Recession and Expansion," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis, pages 63-98, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jeffrey Clemens & Stephen Miran, 2012. "Fiscal Policy Multipliers on Subnational Government Spending," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 46-68, May.
    6. Giancarlo Corsetti & André Meier & Gernot J. Müller, 2012. "What determines government spending multipliers? [Mafia and public spending: Evidence of the fiscal multiplier from a quasi-experiment’, mimeo]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 27(72), pages 521-565.
    7. Juan Serrato & Philippe Wingender, 2016. "Estimating Local Fiscal Multipliers," Working Papers id:11109, eSocialSciences.
    8. Alberto Alesina & Edward Glaeser & Bruce Sacerdote, 2001. "Why Doesn't the United States Have a European-Style Welfare State?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 32(2), pages 187-278.
    9. James Feyrer & Bruce Sacerdote, 2011. "Did the Stimulus Stimulate? Real Time Estimates of the Effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," NBER Working Papers 16759, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Valerie A. Ramey, 2011. "Can Government Purchases Stimulate the Economy?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(3), pages 673-685, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Horst Zimmermann, 2013. "Wie wehrte Deutschland die Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise ab? Oder: Das Erfordernis übergreifender Erklärungsansätze," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 66(24), pages 15-18, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sylvain Leduc & Daniel Wilson, 2013. "Roads to Prosperity or Bridges to Nowhere? Theory and Evidence on the Impact of Public Infrastructure Investment," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 89-142.
    2. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, 2017. "Geographic Cross-Sectional Fiscal Multipliers: What Have We Learned?," Working Paper 458091, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    3. Lukas Buchheim & Martin Watzinger, 2017. "The Employment Effects of Countercyclical Infrastructure Investments," CESifo Working Paper Series 6383, CESifo.
    4. Kameda, Taisuke & Namba, Ryoichi & Tsuruga, Takayuki, 2021. "Decomposing local fiscal multipliers: Evidence from Japan," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    5. Felix Reichling & Charles Whalen, 2012. "Assessing the Short-Term Effects on Output of Changes in Federal Fiscal Policies: Working Paper 2012-08," Working Papers 43278, Congressional Budget Office.
    6. Lukas Buchheim, 2015. "Employment Effects of Stimulus Investments," 2015 Meeting Papers 1455, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Atems, Bebonchu, 2019. "The effects of government spending shocks: Evidence from U.S. states," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 65-80.
    8. Gerritse, Michiel & Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés, 2018. "Does federal contracting spur development? Federal contracts, income, output, and jobs in US cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 121-135.
    9. Ellahie, Atif & Ricco, Giovanni, 2017. "Government purchases reloaded: Informational insufficiency and heterogeneity in fiscal VARs," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 13-27.
    10. Manuel Adelino & Igor Cunha & Miguel A. Ferreira, 2017. "The Economic Effects of Public Financing: Evidence from Municipal Bond Ratings Recalibration," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(9), pages 3223-3268.
    11. Aart Kraay, 2014. "Government Spending Multipliers in Developing Countries: Evidence from Lending by Official Creditors," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 170-208, October.
    12. Räsänen, Johannes & Mäkelä, Erik, 2021. "The effect of government spending on local economies during an economic downturn," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    13. Hristov, Atanas, 2012. "The Effects of Discretionary Fiscal Stimulus: A Survey," MPRA Paper 44714, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Sergio Destefanis & Mario Di Serio & Matteo Fragetta, 2022. "Regional multipliers across the Italian regions," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 1179-1205, September.
    15. Debuque-Gonzales, Margarita, 2021. "Local fiscal multipliers and spillover effects: Evidence from Philippine regions," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 45(2).
    16. Andrea Cerrato & Francesco Filippucci, 2022. "The Impact of Austerity Policies on Local Income: Evidence from Italian Municipalities," Working Papers halshs-03665241, HAL.
    17. Dupor, Bill & Guerrero, Rodrigo, 2017. "Local and aggregate fiscal policy multipliers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 16-30.
    18. Wilhelm, Matthias & Buchheim, Lukas & Watzinger, Martin, 2016. "Investment in Photovoltaics and Job Creation: Evidence from a Billion Dollar Program," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145551, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Virkola, Tuomo, 2014. "Exchange Rate Regime, Fiscal Foresight and the Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy in a Small Open Economy," ETLA Reports 20, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    20. Andrea Cerrato & Francesco Filippucci, 2022. "The Impact of Austerity Policies on Local Income: Evidence from Italian Municipalities," PSE Working Papers halshs-03665241, HAL.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc13:79826. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.