[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/10067.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Precautionary Saving Effect of Government Consumption

Author

Listed:
  • Pavoni, Nicola
  • Ercolani, Valerio
Abstract
We study a largely neglected channel through which government expenditures boost private consumption. We set up a lifecycle model in which households are subject to health shocks. We estimate a negative impact of public health care on household consumption dispersion, wealth and saving. According to our model, this result is explained by a change in the level of precautionary saving, with public health care acting as a form of consumption insurance. We compute the implied consumption multipliers by simulating the typical government consumption shock within a calibrated general equilibrium version of our model, with flexible prices. The impact consumption multiplier generated by the decrease in the level of precautionary saving is positive and sizable. When we include the effect of taxation, the sign of the impact multiplier depends on a few features of the model, such as the persistence of the health shocks. The long-run cumulative multiplier is negative across all calibrations.

Suggested Citation

  • Pavoni, Nicola & Ercolani, Valerio, 2014. "The Precautionary Saving Effect of Government Consumption," CEPR Discussion Papers 10067, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10067
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP10067
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rosella Levaggi & Francesco Menoncin, 2013. "Soft budget constraints in health care: evidence from Italy," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 14(5), pages 725-737, October.
    2. Brinca, Pedro & Holter, Hans A. & Krusell, Per & Malafry, Laurence, 2016. "Fiscal multipliers in the 21st century," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 53-69.
    3. Valerie A. Ramey, 2011. "Identifying Government Spending Shocks: It's all in the Timing," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 1-50.
    4. Giuseppe Bertola & Luigi Guiso & Luigi Pistaferri, 2005. "Uncertainty and Consumer Durables Adjustment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(4), pages 973-1007.
    5. Carroll Christopher Dixon, 2001. "Death to the Log-Linearized Consumption Euler Equation! (And Very Poor Health to the Second-Order Approximation)," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-38, April.
    6. Jonathan Heathcote, 2005. "Fiscal Policy with Heterogeneous Agents and Incomplete Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(1), pages 161-188.
    7. Jappelli, Tullio & Pistaferri, Luigi, 2000. "Using subjective income expectations to test for excess sensitivity of consumption to predicted income growth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 337-358, February.
    8. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, 2019. "Geographic Cross-Sectional Fiscal Spending Multipliers: What Have We Learned?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 1-34, May.
    9. Edouard Challe & Xavier Ragot, 2011. "Fiscal Policy in a Tractable Liquidity‐Constrained Economy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(551), pages 273-317, March.
    10. Edouard Challe & Xavier Ragot, 2011. "Fiscal Policy in a Tractable Liquidity‐Constrained Economy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(551), pages 273-317, March.
    11. Clots-Figueras, Irma, 2011. "Women in politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 664-690.
    12. Axelle Ferriere & Gaston Navarro, 2013. "The Heterogeneous Effects of Government Spending: It's All About Taxes," Working Papers 13-18, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    13. Tauchen, George, 1986. "Finite state markov-chain approximations to univariate and vector autoregressions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 177-181.
    14. Josep Pijoan-Mas, 2006. "Precautionary Savings or Working Longer Hours?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(2), pages 326-352, April.
    15. Orazio P. Attanasio & Nicola Pavoni, 2011. "Risk Sharing in Private Information Models With Asset Accumulation: Explaining the Excess Smoothness of Consumption," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(4), pages 1027-1068, July.
    16. Barro, Robert J, 1981. "Output Effects of Government Purchases," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(6), pages 1086-1121, December.
    17. Daniel Shoag, 2013. "Using State Pension Shocks to Estimate Fiscal Multipliers since the Great Recession," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 121-124, May.
    18. Andrew Mountford & Harald Uhlig, 2009. "What are the effects of fiscal policy shocks?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(6), pages 960-992.
    19. Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 2011. "When Is the Government Spending Multiplier Large?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(1), pages 78-121.
    20. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 1993. "Consumption Growth, the Interest Rate and Aggregation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 631-649.
    21. S. Rao Aiyagari, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 659-684.
    22. Francesco Caprioli & Sandro Momigliano, 2011. "The effects of fiscal shocks with debt-stabilizing budgetary policies in Italy," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 839, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    23. Andrew C. Eggers & Anthony Fowler & Jens Hainmueller & Andrew B. Hall & James M. Snyder, 2015. "On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects: New Evidence from Over 40,000 Close Races," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(1), pages 259-274, January.
    24. Guiso, Luigi & Jappelli, Tullio & Terlizzese, Daniele, 1992. "Earnings uncertainty and precautionary saving," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 307-337, November.
    25. 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.
    26. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, 2017. "Geographic Cross-Sectional Fiscal Multipliers: What Have We Learned?," 2017 Meeting Papers 1214, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    27. Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John B. Jones, 2010. "Why Do the Elderly Save? The Role of Medical Expenses," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(1), pages 39-75, February.
    28. Francesco Giavazzi & Michael McMahon, 2012. "The Households Effects of Government Consumption," NBER Working Papers 17837, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Cutler, David M & Gruber, Jonathan, 1996. "The Effect of Medicaid Expansions on Public Insurance, Private Insurance, and Redistribution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 378-383, May.
    30. Omar Paccagnella & Vincenzo Rebba & Guglielmo Weber, 2008. "Voluntary Private Health Care Insurance Among the Over Fifties in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of SHARE Data," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0086, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    31. Orazio P. Attanasio & Hamish Low, 2004. "Estimating Euler Equations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(2), pages 405-435, April.
    32. Oh, Hyunseung & Reis, Ricardo, 2012. "Targeted transfers and the fiscal response to the great recession," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(S), pages 50-64.
    33. Kanishka Misra & Paolo Surico, 2014. "Consumption, Income Changes, and Heterogeneity: Evidence from Two Fiscal Stimulus Programs," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 84-106, October.
    34. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/mlhspkkq98obpr7vv06u9o6kq is not listed on IDEAS
    35. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante, 2014. "A Model of the Consumption Response to Fiscal Stimulus Payments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(4), pages 1199-1239, July.
    36. Angeletos, George-Marios & Panousi, Vasia, 2009. "Revisiting the supply side effects of government spending," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 137-153, March.
    37. Emi Nakamura & J?n Steinsson, 2014. "Fiscal Stimulus in a Monetary Union: Evidence from US Regions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(3), pages 753-792, March.
    38. Ando,Albert & Guiso,Luigi & Visco,Ignazio (ed.), 1994. "Saving and the Accumulation of Wealth," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521452083, September.
    39. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    40. Olivier Blanchard & Roberto Perotti, 2002. "An Empirical Characterization of the Dynamic Effects of Changes in Government Spending and Taxes on Output," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1329-1368.
    41. Richard Blundell & Luigi Pistaferri & Ian Preston, 2008. "Consumption Inequality and Partial Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1887-1921, December.
    42. Giordano, Raffaela & Momigliano, Sandro & Neri, Stefano & Perotti, Roberto, 2007. "The effects of fiscal policy in Italy: Evidence from a VAR model," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 707-733, September.
    43. Maffezzoli Marco, 2006. "Convergence Across Italian Regions and the Role of Technological Catch-Up," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-43, August.
    44. Vogl, Tom S., 2014. "Race and the politics of close elections," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 101-113.
    45. Fiorito, Riccardo & Kollintzas, Tryphon, 2004. "Public goods, merit goods, and the relation between private and government consumption," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(6), pages 1367-1398, December.
    46. Dirk Krueger & Fabrizio Perri, 2005. "Understanding Consumption Smoothing: Evidence from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Data," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 340-349, 04/05.
    47. Karen E. Dynan, 1993. "How prudent are consumers?," Working Paper Series / Economic Activity Section 135, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    48. Dynan, Karen E, 1993. "How Prudent Are Consumers?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(6), pages 1104-1113, December.
    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. Kopiec, Paweł, 2022. "The government spending multiplier in the Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    2. Antonio Antunes & Valerio Ercolani, 2020. "Public debt expansions and the dynamics of the household borrowing constraint," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 37, pages 1-32, July.
    3. Antonello D'Alessandro & Giulio Fella & Leonardo Melosi, 2019. "Fiscal Stimulus With Learning‐By‐Doing," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(3), pages 1413-1432, August.
    4. Maria Coelho, 2019. "Fiscal Stimulus in a Monetary Union: Evidence from Eurozone Regions," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 67(3), pages 573-617, September.
    5. James S. Cloyne & Paolo Surico, 2017. "Household Debt and the Dynamic Effects of Income Tax Changes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(1), pages 45-81.
    6. Valério Ercolani, 2016. "The precautionary saving: theories, measurements and policies," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.

    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. Axelle Ferriere & Gaston Navarro, 2013. "The Heterogeneous Effects of Government Spending: It's All About Taxes," Working Papers 13-18, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    2. Bahal, G., 2017. "Estimating Transfer Multiplier using Spending on Rural Development Programs in India," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1709, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    3. Christian Bredemeier & Falko Juessen & Roland Winkler, 2020. "Fiscal Policy and Occupational Employment Dynamics," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(6), pages 1527-1563, September.
    4. Fuchs-Schündeln, N. & Hassan, T.A., 2016. "Natural Experiments in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 923-1012, Elsevier.
    5. Henrique S. Basso & Omar Rachedi, 2021. "The Young, the Old, and the Government: Demographics and Fiscal Multipliers," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 110-141, October.
    6. Girish Bahal, 2020. "Estimating the Impact of Welfare Programs on Agricultural Output: Evidence from India," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(3), pages 982-998, May.
    7. Valerie A. Ramey, 2019. "Ten Years after the Financial Crisis: What Have We Learned from the Renaissance in Fiscal Research?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(2), pages 89-114, Spring.
    8. Hollmayr, Josef & Kuckuck, Jan, 2018. "Fiscal multipliers of central, state and local government and of the social security funds in Germany: Evidence of a SVAR," Discussion Papers 28/2018, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    9. repec:ptu:bdpart:r201610 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Sebastian Gechert & Ansgar Rannenberg, 2014. "Are Fiscal Multipliers Regime-Dependent? A Meta Regression Analysis," IMK Working Paper 139-2014, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    11. Laure Simon, 2023. "Fiscal Stimulus and Skill Accumulation over the Life Cycle," Staff Working Papers 23-9, Bank of Canada.
    12. Antonio Antunes & Valerio Ercolani, 2020. "Public debt expansions and the dynamics of the household borrowing constraint," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 37, pages 1-32, July.
    13. Valério Ercolani, 2016. "The precautionary saving: theories, measurements and policies," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    14. Röhrs, Sigrid & Winter, Christoph, 2017. "Reducing government debt in the presence of inequality," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-20.
    15. Girish Bahal & Anand Shrivastava, 2022. "Fiscal transfers and inflation: evidence from India," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(4), pages 1837-1858, October.
    16. Adrien Auclert, 2019. "Monetary Policy and the Redistribution Channel," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(6), pages 2333-2367, June.
    17. Valerie A. Ramey, 2020. "The Macroeconomic Consequences of Infrastructure Investment," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment, pages 219-268, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Bayer, Christian & Born, Benjamin & Luetticke, Ralph, 2023. "The liquidity channel of fiscal policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 86-117.
    19. Jonathan A. Parker, 2011. "On Measuring the Effects of Fiscal Policy in Recessions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(3), pages 703-718, September.
    20. Kurt Mitman & Iourii Manovskii & Marcus Hagedorn, 2017. "The Fiscal Multiplier," 2017 Meeting Papers 1383, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    21. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumption multipliers; Government expenditure by function; Precautionary saving;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • 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

    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:cpr:ceprdp:10067. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.