Title:

Fiscal Policy Switching in Japan, the U.S., and the U.K.

Author(s):

Ito, Arata
Watanabe, Tsutomu
Yabu, Tomoyoshi

Date:

2011

Type:

Working papers

Department:

Center on Japanese Economy and Business

Permanent URL:

http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:10652

Series:

Center on Japanese Economy and Business Working Papers

Part Number:

295

Publisher:

Center on Japanese Economy and Business, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University

Publisher Location:

New York

Abstract:

This paper estimates fiscal policy feedback rules in Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom for more than a century, allowing for stochastic regime changes. Estimating a Markov-switching model by the Bayesian method, we find the following: First, the Japanese data clearly reject the view that the fiscal policy regime is fixed, i.e., that the Japanese government adopted a Ricardian or a non-Ricardian regime throughout the entire period. Instead, our results indicate a stochastic switch of the debt-GDP ratio between stationary and nonstationary processes, and thus a stochastic switch between Ricardian and non-Ricardian regimes. Second, our simulation exercises using the estimated parameters and transition probabilities do not necessarily reject the possibility that the debt-GDP ratio may be nonstationary even in the long run (i.e., globally nonstationary). Third, the Japanese result is in sharp contrast with the results for the U.S. and the U.K. which indicate that in these countries the government's fiscal behavior is consistently characterized by Ricardian policy.

Subject(s):

Economics
Finance

Item views:

161

Metadata:

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