American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Fiscal Volatility Shocks and Economic Activity
American Economic Review
vol. 105,
no. 11, November 2015
(pp. 3352–84)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
We study how unexpected changes in uncertainty about fiscal policy affect economic activity. First, we estimate tax and spending processes for the United States with time-varying volatility to uncover evidence of time-varying volatility. Second, we estimate a VAR for the US economy using the time-varying volatility found in the previous step. Third, we feed the tax and spending processes into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model. Both in the VAR and in the model, we find that unexpected changes in fiscal volatility shocks can have a sizable adverse effect on economic activity. An endogenous increase in markups is a key mechanism. (JEL E12, E23, E32, E52, E62)Citation
Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús, Pablo Guerrón-Quintana, Keith Kuester, and Juan Rubio-Ramírez. 2015. "Fiscal Volatility Shocks and Economic Activity." American Economic Review 105 (11): 3352–84. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20121236Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- E12 General Aggregative Models: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian
- E23 Macroeconomics: Production
- E32 Business Fluctuations; Cycles
- E52 Monetary Policy
- E62 Fiscal Policy