Monetary and Economic Studies Vol.23, No.S-1 / October 2005

Searching for Non-Monotonic Effects of Fiscal Policy: New Evidence

Francesco Giavazzi, Tullio Jappelli, Marco Pagano, Marina Benedetti

Data revisions and the availability of a longer sample offer the opportunity to reconsider empirical findings that suggest that in the OECD countries national saving responds non-monotonically to fiscal policy. The paper confirms that the circumstance most likely to give rise to a non-monotonic response of national saving to a fiscal impulse is a "large and persistent impulse," defined as one in which the full employment surplus, as a percentage of potential output, changes by at least 1.5 percentage points per year over a two-year period. This particular circumstance remains the only statistically significant one even when we allow for non-monotonic responses to arise when public debt is growing rapidly or interest rate spreads are widening. We find that non-monotonic responses are similar for fiscal contractions and expansions. In particular, an increase in net taxes has no effect on national saving during large fiscal contractions or expansions. For government consumption there is a large, albeit in some specifications less than complete, offset during expansions or contractions.

Keywords: Fiscal policy; National saving


Views expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of Japan or Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies.

Copyright © 2005 Bank of Japan All Rights Reserved.

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