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We analyse the effects of a government spending expansion in a DSGE model with Mortensen-Pissarides labour market frictions, deep habits in private and public consumption, investment adjustment costs, a constant-elasticity-of-substitution (CES) production function, and adjustments in employment both at the intensive as well as the extensive margin. The combination of deep habits and CES technology is crucial. The presence of deep habits magnifies the responses of macroeconomic variables to a fiscal stimulus, while an elasticity of substitution between capital and labour in the range of available estimates allows the model to produce a scenario compatible with the observed jobless recovery.
Americans have always believed that economic growth leads to job growth. In this groundbreaking analysis, Stanley Aronowitz argues that this is no longer true. Just Around the Corner examines the state of the American economy as planned by Democrats and Republicans over the last thirty years. Aronowitz finds that economic growth has become "delinked" from job creation, and that unemployment and underemployment are a permanent condition of our economy. He traces the historical roots of this state of affairs and sees under the surface of booms and busts a continuum of economic austerity that creates financial windfalls for the rich at the expense of most Americans. Aronowitz also explores the cultural and political processes by which we have come to describe and accept economics in the United States. He concludes by presenting a concrete plan of action that would guarantee employment and living wages for all Americans. With both measured analysis and persuasive reasoning, Just Around the Corner provides an indispensable guide to our current economic predicament and a bold challenge to economists and policymakers.
Recessions are a recurring phenomenon and there are repeated debates about how to combat them when the crisis hits and after the economy begins to grow again. Laurence Seidman argues that currently we are not ready to combat the next recession. A recession involves a plunge in aggregate demand for goods and services which compels producers to cut production and employment. Fortunately, a large boost in demand can be achieved by a large fiscal stimulus-primarily a temporary large increase in tax rebates for households plus several fiscal supplements. But fiscal stimulus has always involved a large increase in government debt, something Congress understandably resists. The assumption that a large fiscal stimulus requires an increase in government debt is false, Seidman asserts in this thought-provoking book. In fact, it is astonishingly easy to implement even a very large fiscal stimulus without any increase in government debt. All it takes is for Congress to enact a fiscal stimulus and the Federal Reserve to make a transfer (not loan) to the Treasury roughly equal to the fiscal stimulus so the Treasury doesn't have to borrow. Stimulus-without-debt consists of a transfer (not loan) from the Federal Reserve to the Treasury so that the Treasury does not have to borrow to finance fiscal stimulus enacted by Congress. Seidman explains all aspects of this new way to combat recession, "stimulus-without-debt." He presents evidence that fiscal stimulus works in a recession-it increases aggregate demand which stimulates production and employment. He explains why the fiscal stimulus should consist primarily of tax rebates for households plus several fiscal supplements. His analysis covers basic foundations as well as implications for inflation, central banks, and how to address secular stagnation. When the next recession hits, we will be ready to combat it if we know how to use fiscal stimulus without increasing government debt. Seidman shows us how.
The U.S. economy clearly needs government action to stimulate job creation in what has been, so far, a "jobless recovery." Without action, the modest economic growth projected for next year will be too little to stop unemployment from rising to 6.0% or higher and staying there throughout 2003. The challenge is to devise a stimulus plan that is both effective and avoids undermining the nation's long-term fiscal health. Any stimulus designed to increase productive capacity--the supply side of the economy--will be ineffective because at this time there is already substantial unused capacity. And any stimulus involving permanent spending increases or tax cuts will adversely affect the government's future fiscal position. Thus, a stimulus package that is both effective and fiscally prudent must consist of new but temporary spending, coupled with an immediate but temporary tax cut in the form of a wage bonus. Such measures will boost demand for goods and services, generating more customers and leading businesses to invest and increase employment. The year 2000 showed that U.S. unemployment can be pushed down to 4.0% without causing inflation. The goal now should be to accelerate growth, moving the economy back to a 4.0% unemployment rate and the broad-based prosperity that would follow.
Contents: (1) Background: Severity of the 2008-2009 Recession; Policy Responses to the Financial Crisis and Recession: Monetary Policy Actions; Fiscal Policy Actions; (2) Is Sustained Economic Recovery Underway?; (3) The Shape of Economic Recovery: Demand Side Problems?: Consumption Spending; Investment Spending; Net Exports; Supply Side Problems?; Policy Responses to Increase the Pace of Economic Recovery: The Case for More Fiscal Stimulus; The Case Against More Fiscal Stimulus; The Case Against More Monetary Stimulus; Economic Projections. This is a print on demand edition of an important, hard-to-find publication.
We estimate the impact of fiscal stimulus measures enacted in response to COVID-19 on U.S. GDP, investment and exports. We apply a dynamic computable general equilibrium model adept at estimating total direct and indirect effects and their time-path. Initial stimulus bills, including the CARES Act, reduced the potential decline in GDP resulting from the pandemic by 7.1 percentage points in early 2020. Later rounds were not as beneficial, largely due to crowding out of investment. Unemployment benefits provided a larger increase in GDP than direct and indirect payments to individuals, and corporate tax relief had a positive impact on growth.
By far the most widely noted and puzzling aspect of the current economic recovery is its failure to create jobs. While payroll employment in seven previous recessions increased a full 7 percent in the first twenty-three months following the NBER business cycle trough, such employment increased by only 0.8 percent - just over one-tenth as much - from March 1991 to March 1993. Part of the explanation of negligible job growth lies in the recovery's relatively slow pace of output growth, which has been little more than one-third the usual postwar pace. The remaining part of the job puzzle stems from the ebullient performance of productivity - that is, output per hour in the nonfarm business sector - which registered a growth rate of 3.2 percent in the four quarters ending in 1992:4, the most rapid rate recorded in any similar period for more than sixteen years. The share of output growth accounted for by productivity growth in the current recovery is 112 percent, far exceeding the 47 percent average of the previous postwar recoveries at the same stage. For any given pace of output growth, more rapid productivity growth by definition implies less rapid growth in labor input. This suggests that the recent revival in productivity growth may be the key to understanding the puzzling absence of job creation in the recovery. Productivity-led growth is nothing but good news. In the two decades ending in mid-1992, the nonfarm business sector registered an average annual productivity growth rate of less than 1 percent: 0.85 percent, to be exact. Imagine the benefits to the economy if the recent good news on productivity were to imply, as some have suggested, a doubling in productivity growth to a rate of 1.7 percent over the next decade. For any given path of labor input, nonfarm private business output in the year 2003 would be almost 9 percent larger - some $450 billion more - allowing that much more private and/or public spending. Productivity-led growth does not imply a jobless recovery in anything but the shortest run. Instead, any beneficial shock to productivity growth sets the stage for lower inflation that enables policy makers to stimulate output growth sufficiently to create the same number of jobs that would have occurred in the absence of the shock. If the jobless character of the 1991-93 recovery indeed has been caused by a benign productivity shock, then its jobless character implies that there has been too little stimulus to output growth, not that a productivity surge must necessarily rob the nation of jobs.
This paper discusses three policy tools to mitigate jobless recoveries during financial crises: inflation, real currency depreciation, and credit-recovery policies. Using a sample of financial crises in Emerging Market economies, we document that large inflationary spikes appear to help unemployment to get back to pre-crisis levels. However, the counterpart of inflation is sizably lower real wages. Hence, inflation does not prevent wage earners as a whole from getting hit by financial crises. Interestingly, neither the change in the real exchange rate nor the change in output composition (tradables/nontradables), from output peak to recovery point, displays a statistically significant relationship with inflation or jobless recovery. This suggests that currency depreciation can help reduce unemployment only insofar as it is associated with inflation, and that jobless recovery is likely due to nominal wage rigidity. The paper also shows that measures to reactivate credit flows could be beneficial to wage earners as a whole, as measured by the real wage bill.