Tax Discounting in a High‐debt Economy*
估计了比利时的消费函数，允许政府债务贴现和未来整体贴现，并考虑政府支出的替代或互补效应。结果拒绝李嘉图等价，支持消费者存在较短规划期或预防性储蓄动机。
Abstract This paper estimates a consumption function for Belgium that allows for government debt discounting and for the overall discounting of the future (reflecting the consumers’ planning horizon or precautionary savings). It also allows for substitutability or complementarity effects from government expenditures. Results suggest that consumers do take into account (future) government activity. Ricardian Equivalence is rejected however, since we cannot reject a relatively short planning horizon or a precautionary savings motive for the consumers. We use bootstrapped distributions for inference since the instrumental variables estimators used may have non‐standard distributions. This procedure also helps to tackle potential endogeneity and sample size problems.