We are pleased to invite you to the next Baltic Economic Association Online Research Seminars and are delighted to welcome Francesco Zanetti (University of Oxford). Francesco Zanetti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Oxford and the David Richards Fellow of Wadham College. He holds a PhD in Economics from Boston College, and a PhD in Economic Theory and Institutions from the University of Bologna. Before joining Oxford in September 2012, he spent eight years in the Bank of England, first as an Economist, Senior Economist and Advisor in the Monetary Analysis Section. He is a visiting scholar at the Bank of International Settlements, the Bank of England and provided technical support and training to more than forty central banks around the world. He held visiting teaching positions at the London School of Economics, London Business School, and the joint IMF Vienna Institute. His research interests are in the fields of Macroeconomics, Monetary Economics and Applied Econometrics. Among other topics, he has worked on labor market dynamics and the effect of structural reforms, the propagation of news shocks, the state dependence of fiscal multipliers, and the impact of unconventional policies. He is a recipient of the British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for the academic year 2020-2021. His past research was supported by the British Academy, Leverhulme Foundation, the Australian Research Cancil, the Zengin Foundation, and the John Fell Fund. He serves as an associate editor for the Economic Journal, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Oxford Economic Papers, as a co-editor for Macroeconomic Dynamics, and as a member of the editorial board for Central Bank Review. His research has appeared in leading academic journals and policy forums.
More about the speaker: https://users.ox.ac.uk/~wadh4073/
Speaker: Francesco Zanetti (University of Oxford)
Title: State Dependence of Fiscal Multipliers: The Source of Fluctuations Matters (with Mishel Ghassibe)
Paper available here.
Abstract:
We develop a general theory of state-dependent fiscal multipliers in a framework featuring interaction between two empirically relevant goods market frictions: idle productive capacity and unsatisfied demand. Our key novel finding is that the source of economic fluctuations determines the cyclicality of fiscal multipliers. Policies that stimulate aggregate demand, such as government spending and consumption tax cuts, have multipliers that are large in demand- driven recessions, but small and possibly negative in supply-driven downturns. On the other hand, policies that boost aggregate supply, such as cuts in taxes on labor income and firms’ payroll and sales, are ineffective in demand- driven recessions, but powerful if the downturn is driven by supply factors. Spending austerity, implemented by a reduction in government consumption, can be the policy with the largest multiplier in severe supply-side recessions and demand-driven booms, provided elasticities of labor demand and supply are sufficiently low. We obtain model- free empirical support for our theoretical predictions by using a novel econometric specification that allows us to estimate spending and tax cut multipliers in recessionary and expansionary episodes, conditional on those being either demand- or supply-driven.
Date: Thursday, November 25
Time: 16:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn
Join Zoom Meeting
https://sseriga-edu.zoom.us/j/88001979487?pwd=cU51SGMxdTBSZzFrWWZ5d2hTWFJJQT09
Meeting ID: 880 0197 9487
Passcode: 374313