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

合作研究理解消费对财政刺激支付的反应：结构分析非技术摘要财政刺激支付（例如，退税和其他形式的现金转移到家庭）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一种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，国会批准了这类财政干预措施。根据具体情况和家庭规模，家庭收到的补助金在300美元至1 000美元之间。总的来说，这些财政支出非常大：2001年约为380亿美元，2008年约为790亿美元，2009年约为600亿美元。基于这些政策事件前后美国家庭样本的支出模式，已经存在大量的经验证据，这些证据考察了家庭支出如何受到财政刺激支出的影响。这一集体经验证据的结论是，非耐用家庭消费（即，食品、公用事业、个人服务、交通、天然气等方面的支出）在收到刺激资金的季度中，这一估计值上升了约30%，而当耐用品（例如，小型家用耐用品和汽车）。这些发现有些令人困惑，因为现有的经济理论预测，家庭只会花费支付的一小部分，（或用它来偿还债务）。拟议研究的目标是开发一个经济模型，既为观察到的家庭消费支出对财政刺激支出的巨大反应提供连贯的解释，并可用于预测家庭在不同宏观经济条件下对未来刺激付款的反应的支出模式。拟议的研究依赖于一个核心观点，即家庭支出了相当大一部分付款，因为很大一部分家庭的流动性受到限制。特别是，关于家庭投资组合的调查证据表明，即使是拥有汽车、房屋净值或退休账户等大量财富的家庭，也会受到限制，因为这些资产是非流动性的，即，在经济衰退时，将这些资产转换为维持消费支出所需的现金成本很高。因此，财政刺激支出的很大一部分--流动性很强--很快就花光了。从上次衰退中痛苦地认识到，衰退并不都是一样的。这意味着，尽管有现有的经验证据，但人们不能假设未来在不同经济条件下不同数额的刺激支出将对支出产生相同的影响。提出的经济模型将有助于评估在不同宏观经济和流动性条件下财政刺激支付的总体影响。该模型还将提供一个运行“反事实”政策实验的框架，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在经济衰退期间为美国家庭提供临时救济。这一点很重要，因为用于财政刺激支出的资金可以用于其他可能增加家庭支出的政策，例如增加失业救济金的慷慨程度，或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.