Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries. ENEPRI Working Paper No. 15, October 2002

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of fiscal policy on GDP, prices and interest rates in 5 OECD countries, using a structural Vector Autoregression approach. Its main results can be summarized as follows: 1)The estimated effects of fiscal policy on GDP tend to be small: positive government spending multipliers larger than 1 tend to be the exception; 2) The effects of fiscal policy on GDP and its components have become substantially weaker over time; 3) Under plausible values of the price elasticity, government spending has positive effects on the price level, although usually small; 4) Government spending shocks have significant effects on the nominal and real short interest rate, but of varying signs; 5) In the post-1980 period, net tax shocks have positive short run effects on the nominal interest rate, and typically negative or zero effects on prices; 6) The US is an outlier in many dimensions; responses to fiscal shocks estimated on US data are often not representative of the average OECD country included in this sample.

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