Purpose – This paper examines whether fiscal and monetary expansion would affect output in Australia.
Research design, data, and methodology – An extended IS-LM model which describes the equilibrium in the goods market and the money market is applied. The real effective exchange rate and the real stock price are included in order to determine whether there may be any substitution or wealth effect. The sample consists of Annual data ranging from 1990 to 2018. The GARCH process is used in empirical work to correct for potential autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity.
Results – Expansionary fiscal policy reduces output; whereas, expansionary monetary policy raises output. In addition, real appreciation of the Australian dollar, a lower U.S. interest rate, a higher real stock price or a lower expected inflation would increase output. The finding that expansionary fiscal policy has a negative impact on real GDP suggests that the negative crowding-out effect on private spending dominates the positive impact.
Conclusions – Fiscal prudence needs to be pursued. Real depreciation of the Australian dollar hurts output. Monetary tightening in the U.S. generates a negative effect on Australia’s output. A healthy stock market is conducive to economic growth as higher stock prices tend to result in the wealth and other positive effects, increasing consumption and business spending.
Many developing countries have attempted to depreciate their currencies in order to make their products cheaper, stimulate exports, shift aggregate demand to the right, and increase aggregate output. However, currency depreciation tends to increase import prices, raise domestic inflation, reduce capital inflows, and shift aggregate supply to the left. The net impact is unclear. The paper incorporates the monetary policy function in the model, which is determined by the inflation gap, the output gap, the real effective exchange rate, and the world real interest rate. Applying an extended IS-MP-AS model (Romer, 2000), the paper finds that real depreciation raised real GDP during 1997.Q1-2005.Q3 whereas real appreciation increased real GDP during 2005.Q4-2017.Q2. In addition, a higher government debt-to-GDP ratio, a lower U.S. real federal funds rate, a higher real stock price, a lower real oil price or a lower expected inflation rate would help increase real GDP. Hence, real depreciation or real appreciation may increase or reduce aggregate output, depending upon the level of economic development. Although expansionary fiscal policy is effective in stimulating the economy, caution needs to be exercised as there may be a debt threshold beyond which a further increase in the debt-to-GDO ratio would hurt economic growth.
Purpose – Many countries rely on currency depreciation or debt-financed government spending to stimulate their economies. Currency depreciation tends to increase net exports and aggregate demand but reduce short-run aggregate supply due to higher import costs. Debt-financed government spending increases aggregate demand, but the crowding-out effect due to a higher real interest rate may reduce private spending and aggregate demand. Therefore, the net impact of currency depreciation or debt-financed government spending on equilibrium real GDP is unclear. Research design, data, and methodology - This paper examines potential impacts of real depreciation of the ringgit, more government debt as a percent of GDP and other relevant macroeconomic variables on aggregate output in Malaysia. Results - Applying the AD/AS model, this paper finds that aggregate output in Malaysia is positively associated with real appreciation during 2005.Q3-2010.Q3, real depreciation during 2010.Q4-2016.Q1, the debt-to-GDP ratio and the real stock price, negatively affected by the real lending rate and inflation expectations, and is not influenced by the real oil price. Conclusions - Real depreciation of the ringgit after 2010. Q3 or sustainable expansionary fiscal policy would be beneficial to the economy.
Based on a simultaneous-equation model consisting of aggregate demand and short-run aggregate supply, this paper estimates a reducedform equation specifying that the equilibrium real GDP is a function of the real effective exchange rate, the government deficit as a percent of GDP, the real interest rate, foreign income, labor productivity, the real oil price, the expected inflation rate, and the interactive and intercept binary variables accounting for a potential change in the slope of the real effective exchange rate and shift in the intercept. Applying the exponential GARCH technique, it finds that aggregate output in Australia has a positive relationship with the real effective exchange rate during 2003.Q3 – 2013.Q2, the government deficit as a percent of GDP, U.S. real GDP, labor productivity and the real oil price and a negative relationship with the real effective exchange rate during 2013.Q3 – 2016.Q1, the real lending rate and the expected inflation rate. These results suggest that real appreciation was expansionary before 2013.Q3 whereas real depreciation was expansionary after 2013.Q2 and that more government deficit as a percent of GDP would be helpful to stimulate the economy. Hence, the impact of real appreciation or real depreciation on real GDP may change overtime. Keywords: Exchange Rates, Government Deficit, Interest Rates,