Fiscal Policy Works

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Paul Krugman

December 24, 2011, 9:15 AM

Via Brad DeLong, there’s a paper by David Romer (pdf) summarizing recent research on fiscal policy, inspired by the crisis and aftermath. And his conclusion is not at all what you hear on the talk shows; it is that there is now overwhelming evidence that fiscal policy does in fact work when it’s not offset by monetary policy. And since we’re now in a liquidity trap in which conventional monetary policy has no traction, that’s the world we’re in.

I like this footnote, which gives you a sense of what has been going on:

3 For within-country evidence, see Chodorow-Reich, Feiveson, Liscow, and Woolston (2010); Suárez Serrato and Wingender (2010); Shoag (2010); Fishback and Kachanovskaya (2010); and Nakamura and Steinsson (2011). For cross-country evidence, see International Monetary Fund (2010); Council of Economic Advisers (2009); and Kraay (2010). For time-series evidence (as well as simulation-based evidence), see Hall (2009); Barro and Redlick (2010); Fisher and Peters (2009); Coenen et al. (2010); and Christiano, Eichenbaum, and Rebelo (2010). On this list, all but Kraay, Barro and Redlick, and Fisher and Peters implicitly or explicitly try to provide evidence about the case where monetary policy does not act to offset the effects of fiscal policy. With the exception of two of these three (Kraay and Barro and Redlick), the papers all suggest substantial effects of fiscal policy. As I describe below, this brief tour omits all work that predates the crisis.

Of course, all you’ll hear on TV is nyah-nyah-nyah the Obama stimulus didn’t work.

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