Collaborative Research: Understanding the consumption response to fiscal stimulus payments: A Structural Analysis

合作研究：了解消费对财政刺激支付的反应：结构分析

• 批准号: 1126039
• 负责人: Greg Kaplan
• 金额: $ 23.95万
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-15 至 2012-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1126039&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Understanding; consumption; response

Collaborative ResearchUnderstanding the Consumption Response to Fiscal Stimulus Payments:A Structural AnalysisNon-technical abstractFiscal stimulus payments (e.g., tax rebates and other forms of cash transfers to families) are a very common policy instrument used by governments in the US and other countries to stabilize aggregate economic activity and moderate the effects of recessions on household welfare. Fiscal interventions of this type have been authorized by Congress during the economic downturns of 1975, 2001, 2008, and 2009. Families have received payments of between $300 and $1,000, depending on the specific episode and on household size. In the aggregate, these fiscal outlays have been remarkably large: around $38B in 2001, $79B in 2008, and $60B in 2009.There already exists a wide body of empirical evidence, based on the spending patterns of a sample of US households around the time of these policy episodes, which examines how household expenditures are affected by fiscal stimulus payments. This collective body of empirical evidence concludes that nondurable household consumption (i.e., spending on food, utilities, personal services, transportation, gas, etc...) rises by around 30 percent in the quarter in which stimulus payments are received, and that this estimate almost doubles when durable goods (e.g., small household durables and cars) are included. These findings are somewhat puzzling since existing economic theories predict that households will only spend a much smaller fraction of the payment, and will either save the majority (or use it to pay down debt).The goal of the proposed research is to develop an economic model that both provides a coherent explanation for the large observed response of household consumption expenditures to fiscal stimulus payments, and can be used to predict the spending patterns of households in response to future episodes of stimulus payments under different macroeconomic conditions. The proposed research relies on the central insight that households spend a substantial part of their payments because a large fraction of households are liquidity constrained. In particular, survey evidence on household portfolios suggests that even households who own substantial wealth in the form of cars, home equity, or retirement accounts can be constrained because such assets are illiquid, i.e., it is costly to convert these assets into the cash needed to sustain consumption expenditures in a recession. For this reason, a significant fraction of fiscal stimulus payments -which are instead liquid- is spent very rapidly.As learned painfully from the last downturn, recessions are not all alike. This means that despite the existing empirical evidence, one cannot assume that future stimulus payments of different amounts in different economic conditions will have the same effects on spending. The propsed economic model will be useful to evaluate what the aggregate effects of fiscal stimulus payments would be under different macroeconomic and liquidity conditions. The model will also provide a framework for running 'counterfactual' policy experiments in order to gauge the benefits of fiscal stimulus payments relative to alternative fiscal policy options that are also aimed at providing temporary relief to US households during economic recessions. This is important because the money that is spent on fiscal stimulus payments could arguably be spent on other policies that may also increase household expenditure, such as, increasing the generosity of unemployment benefits, or reducing indirect taxes on consumption spending.

协作研究对财政刺激付款的消费响应的协作意识：结构性分析non-technical-technical-ticknical thecractialfist刺激付款（例如，纳税折扣和其他形式的现金转移到家庭）是美国和其他国家 /地区的一种非常普遍的政策工具，可稳定聚合的经济活动，并在家庭经济活动中稳定效果。国会在1975年，2001年，2008年和2009年的经济低迷期间已授权这种类型的财政干预。家庭的付款在300至1,000美元之间，具体取决于特定情节和家庭规模。总体而言，这些财政上的支出非常大：2001年约38B美元，2008年的79B美元和2009年的60B $ 609.基于这些政策时期的美国家庭的支出模式，已经存在了广泛的经验证据，该模式在这些政策时期内审查了家庭支出如何受家庭费用的付费付费，这是基于这些家庭的时间。这一集体经验证据的结论得出的结论是，在收到刺激性支付的季度中，不可治疗的家庭消费（即，在食品，公用事业，个人服务，运输，汽油等上支出）上升了约30％，并且在耐用的商品（例如，小型家庭耐用物和汽车）时几乎翻了一番。这些发现有些令人困惑，因为现有的经济理论预测，家庭只会花费少量的付款，并且可以节省大多数人（或用它来偿还债务）。拟议的研究的目标是开发一个经济模型，这两个模型都为家庭消费的大量响应提供了一个相干的解释，以预测家庭消费的大量响应，并预测了对费用刺激的响应，并且可以预测家庭刺激措施，并为福音刺激措施提供了一种模型，并提供了跨国公司的付款方式。在不同的宏观经济条件下的刺激支付。拟议的研究依赖于中央见解，即家庭花费很大一部分，因为大部分家庭受到流动性的限制。特别是，有关家庭投资组合的调查证据表明，即使以汽车，房屋净值或退休帐户形式拥有大量财富的家庭也可以受到限制，因为这些资产是流动性不足的，即将这些资产转换为维持经济衰退中消费支出所需的现金所需的现金。因此，大量的财政刺激支付（相反，液体）的花费很快。从最后一次衰退中痛苦地学习，衰退并不全都相似。这意味着，尽管有现有的经验证据，但不能假设在不同经济条件下不同数量的未来刺激支付将对支出产生相同的影响。支撑的经济模型将有助于评估财政刺激支付的总体影响在不同的宏观经济和流动性条件下。该模型还将为运行“反事实”政策实验的框架提供一个框架，以评估相对于替代财政政策选择的财政刺激支付的好处，这些财政政策选择也旨在在经济衰退期间为美国家庭提供临时救济。这很重要，因为可以说，花在财政刺激支付上的钱可以花在其他政策上，这些政策也可能增加家庭支出，例如增加失业福利的慷慨大方或减少对消费支出的间接税。