Suchergebnisse

This paper examines the effects of fiscal policy measures on GDP and the government budget balance in a structural VAR model. In order to identify expenditure shocks we follow Blachard/Perotti (2002) and assume that government expenditure is partly predetermined in the budget. For the identification of tax policy shocks we exploit changes in tax law in Germany between 1967 and 2008. Our results support significant short term effects of fiscal expansionary policies. In the medium term, however, the model predicts substantial increases in government debt. Applying the model to the recent stimulus programmes in Germany, we find that the stimulus programme had substantial effect on output in the short run.

Inflation forecast uncertainty is of importance for a wide range of agents in the economy, central banks in particular. Ways to describe and account for this uncertainty in a consistent manner have received increasing attention of late, in part due to the growing number of inflation-targeting central banks. This paper develops a large structural VAR for the Swedish economy and estimates it in a Bayesian framework. The methodology permits not only structural interpretation and analysis but offers a natural way to formalise forecast uncertainty, as the posterior predictive density from the model has the interpretation of a fan chart.

This paper studies the economic fluctuations of an open economy such as the French economy. A system of variables containing output, price level, trade balance, real exchange rate and oil prices is analyzed by applying the structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) methodology initiated by Sims (1980). This set of variables allows to evaluate the main sources of impulses of the French economy fluctuations. The results show that five structural shocks are identified using the long-run constraints implemented by Blanchard and Quah (1989). From the SVAR dynamic properties, impulse response functions and variance decomposition, the French economy is shown to be particularly vulnerable to supply and oil price shocks, where these two shocks respectively contribute to 40% and 35% of the economic disturbance. France is also hit by important external shocks which damage its trade balance position. Finally, it is found that shocks related to economic policy (demand shocks) have a quite limited impact on the economic activity.