We show that trade credit contracts between sectors can provide a useful alternative to fiscal transfers during a major productivity shock. Defaults in credit contracts function as transfers between sectors, which can be implemented through a bankruptcy law or through credit renegotiation. Transfers implemented through defaults allow for a reduction in the size of the fiscal policy that restores the economy to the optimal allocation, constituting a relevant alternative to economies without an available fiscal space to implement the optimal policy.
Does household debt affect the size of the fiscal multiplier? We investigate the effects of household debt on government spending multipliers using a smooth transition vector autoregression model. Through generalized impulse response functions, we measure whether the effect of government spending on GDP is conditioned by different levels of household debt in Australia, Sweden, and Norway, three countries with high levels of household indebtedness, and in the world’s seven largest economies. Our results indicate that the short-term effects of government spending tend to be higher if fiscal expansion takes place during periods of low household debt. On average, the fiscal multiplier (on impact) is 0.70, 0.61, and 0.79 (percent of GDP) larger when the increase in government spending takes place during periods of low household debt for Australia, Norway, and the United States.
We follow Belongia and Ireland (2021) and investigate the role that the Center for Financial Stability credit card-augmented Divisia monetary aggregates could play in monetary policy and business cycle analysis. We use Bayesian methods to estimate a structural VAR under priors that reflect Keynesian channels of monetary transmission, but produce posterior distributions for the structural parameters consistent with classical channels. We also find that valuable information is contained in the credit-augmented Divisia monetary aggregates and that they perform even better than the conventional Divisia aggregates, in terms of highlighting the role of the money supply in aggregate demand.