Local projections in unstable environments

Abstract

This paper develops a local projection estimator for estimating impulse responses in the presence of time variation. Importantly, we allow local instabilities in both slope coefficients and variances. Monte Carlo simulations illustrate that the method performs well in practice. Using our proposed estimator, we shed new light on the effects of fiscal policy shocks and the size of government spending multipliers. Our analysis uncovers the existence of instabilities that were unaccounted for in previous studies, and links time variation in the multipliers to the size of government debt.