DOES NEOCLASSICAL THEORY ACCOUNT FOR THE EFFECTS OF BIG FISCAL SHOCKS? EVIDENCE FROM WORLD WAR II*
利用二战期间美国最大的财政冲击数据，检验新古典增长模型能否定量解释宏观经济活动，发现该理论能有效解释这一大规模财政冲击下的经济表现。
Much debate surrounds the usefulness of the neoclassical growth model for assessing the macroeconomic impact of fiscal shocks. We test the theory using data from World War II, which is by far the largest fiscal shock in the history of the United States. We take observed changes in fiscal policy during the war as inputs into a parameterized, dynamic general equilibrium model and compare the values of all variables in the model to the actual values of these variables in the data. Our main finding is that the theory quantitatively accounts for macroeconomic activity during this big fiscal shock.