巴德 宏观经济学原理（英文版·第8版）Chapter 16 Eye Ons.pptxVIP

16EYE ONSFiscal Policy In February 2009, in the depths of the 2008–2009 recession, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a $787 billion fiscal stimulus package.This Act of Congress is an example of discretionary fiscal policy. Did this action by Congress contribute to ending the 2008–2009 recession and making the recession less severe than it might have been?The Obama Administration economists are confident that the stimulus package made a significant contribution to easing and ending the recession. But many, and perhaps most, economists don’t agree.They think that the stimulus package played a small role and that the truly big story is not discretionary fiscal policy but the role played by automatic stabilizers.What were the fiscal policy actions and their likely effects?Discretionary Fiscal PolicyPresident Obama promised that fiscal stimulus would save or create 650,000 jobs by the end of the 2009 summer. In October 2009, the Administration economists declared that the fiscal stimulus had saved or created the promised 650,000 jobs. This claim of success might be correct, but it isn’t startling and it isn’t a huge claim. Why?How much GDP would 650,000 people produce?In 2009, each employed person produced $100,000 of real GDP on average. So 650,000 people would produce $65 billion of GDP.But only 20 percent of the $787 billion stimulus package had been spent (or taken in tax breaks), so the stimulus was only about $160 billion.If government outlays of $160 billion created $65 billion of GDP, the multiplier was 0.4 (65/160 = 0.4). This multiplier is much smaller than the 1.6 that the Obama economists say will eventually occur.They believe, like Keynes, that the multiplier starts out small and gets larger over time as spending plans respond to rising incomes.An initial increase in expenditure increases aggregate expenditure. But the increase in aggregate expenditure generates higher incomes, which in turn induces greater consumption expenditure.