Collaborative Research: Understanding the Consumption Response to Fiscal Stimulus Payments: A Structural Analysis

合作研究了解消费对财政刺激支出的反应：结构分析非技术摘要财政刺激支出(例如，退税和其他形式的现金转移给家庭)是美国和其他国家政府用来稳定总体经济活动和缓和经济衰退对家庭福利影响的非常常见的政策工具。在1975年、2001年、2008年和2009年的经济衰退期间，这种类型的财政干预得到了国会的授权。家庭收到的赔偿金在300美元到1000美元之间，具体取决于具体事件和家庭规模。总体而言，这些财政支出规模惊人：2001年约为380亿美元，2008年为790亿美元，2009年为600亿美元。基于这些政策时期美国家庭样本的支出模式，已经存在大量经验证据，研究家庭支出如何受到财政刺激支出的影响。这组经验证据得出的结论是，非耐用的家庭消费(即食品、公用事业、个人服务、交通、天然气等方面的支出)在收到刺激付款的那个季度，这一数字增加了约30%，如果计入耐用品(例如，小型家用耐用品和汽车)，这一估计几乎翻了一番。这些发现有些令人费解，因为现有的经济理论预测，家庭只会花费一小部分支出，并将储蓄大部分(或用来偿还债务)。拟议中的研究的目标是开发一个经济模型，既能为家庭消费支出对财政刺激支出的大量反应提供连贯的解释，又能用来预测家庭在不同宏观经济条件下对未来刺激支出的反应的支出模式。这项拟议的研究依赖于一个核心观点，即家庭支出的很大一部分是因为很大一部分家庭的流动性有限。特别是，关于家庭投资组合的调查证据表明，即使是以汽车、房屋净值或退休账户的形式拥有大量财富的家庭也可能受到限制，因为这些资产缺乏流动性，即在经济衰退中将这些资产转换为维持消费支出所需的现金成本高昂。出于这个原因，相当大一部分财政刺激支出--相反，是流动性的--花得非常快。正如从上次衰退中痛苦地认识到的那样，衰退并不都是一样的。这意味着，尽管有现有的经验证据，但人们不能假设，在不同的经济状况下，未来不同数额的刺激支出将对支出产生相同的影响。所提出的经济模型将有助于评估财政刺激支出在不同宏观经济和流动性条件下的总体效果。该模型还将提供一个框架，用于运行“反事实”政策实验，以衡量财政刺激支出相对于其他财政政策选择的好处，这些财政政策选择也旨在为美国家庭在经济衰退期间提供暂时缓解。这一点很重要，因为可以说，用于财政刺激支出的资金可以用于其他政策，这些政策也可能增加家庭支出，比如增加失业救济金的慷慨程度，或者减少消费支出的间接税。

Collaborative ResearchUnderstanding the Consumption Response to Fiscal Stimulus Payments:A Structural AnalysisNon-technical abstractFiscal stimulus payments (e.g., tax rebates and other forms of cash transfers to families) are a very common policy instrument used by governments in the US and other countries to stabilize aggregate economic activity and moderate the effects of recessions on household welfare. Fiscal interventions of this type have been authorized by Congress during the economic downturns of 1975, 2001, 2008, and 2009. Families have received payments of between $300 and $1,000, depending on the specific episode and on household size. In the aggregate, these fiscal outlays have been remarkably large: around $38B in 2001, $79B in 2008, and $60B in 2009.There already exists a wide body of empirical evidence, based on the spending patterns of a sample of US households around the time of these policy episodes, which examines how household expenditures are affected by fiscal stimulus payments. This collective body of empirical evidence concludes that nondurable household consumption (i.e., spending on food, utilities, personal services, transportation, gas, etc...) rises by around 30 percent in the quarter in which stimulus payments are received, and that this estimate almost doubles when durable goods (e.g., small household durables and cars) are included. These findings are somewhat puzzling since existing economic theories predict that households will only spend a much smaller fraction of the payment, and will either save the majority (or use it to pay down debt).The goal of the proposed research is to develop an economic model that both provides a coherent explanation for the large observed response of household consumption expenditures to fiscal stimulus payments, and can be used to predict the spending patterns of households in response to future episodes of stimulus payments under different macroeconomic conditions. The proposed research relies on the central insight that households spend a substantial part of their payments because a large fraction of households are liquidity constrained. In particular, survey evidence on household portfolios suggests that even households who own substantial wealth in the form of cars, home equity, or retirement accounts can be constrained because such assets are illiquid, i.e., it is costly to convert these assets into the cash needed to sustain consumption expenditures in a recession. For this reason, a significant fraction of fiscal stimulus payments -which are instead liquid- is spent very rapidly.As learned painfully from the last downturn, recessions are not all alike. This means that despite the existing empirical evidence, one cannot assume that future stimulus payments of different amounts in different economic conditions will have the same effects on spending. The propsed economic model will be useful to evaluate what the aggregate effects of fiscal stimulus payments would be under different macroeconomic and liquidity conditions. The model will also provide a framework for running 'counterfactual' policy experiments in order to gauge the benefits of fiscal stimulus payments relative to alternative fiscal policy options that are also aimed at providing temporary relief to US households during economic recessions. This is important because the money that is spent on fiscal stimulus payments could arguably be spent on other policies that may also increase household expenditure, such as, increasing the generosity of unemployment benefits, or reducing indirect taxes on consumption spending.