Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/60897 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
Staff Report No. 551
Publisher: 
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York, NY
Abstract: 
Cutting government spending on goods and services increases the budget defi cit if the nominal interest rate is close to zero. This is the message of a simple but standard New Keynesian DSGE model calibrated with Bayesian methods. The cut in spending reduces output and thus - holding rates for labor and sales taxes constant - reduces revenues by even more than what is saved by the spending cut. Similarly, increasing sales taxes can increase the budget defi cit rather than reduce it. Both results suggest limitations of austerity measures in low interest rate economies to cut budget deficits. Running budget deficits can by itself be either expansionary or contractionary for output, depending on how deficits interact with expectations about the long run in the model. If deficits trigger expectations of i) lower long-run government spending, ii) higher long-run sales taxes, or iii) higher future infl ation, they are expansionary. If deficits trigger expectations of higher long-run labor taxes or lower long-run productivity, they are contractionary.
Subjects: 
fiscal policy
liquidity trap
JEL: 
E52
E62
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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