Fiscal Policy and Private Consumption: Instrumental Variables Tests of the "Consolidated Approach"
利用工具变量检验财政政策对私人消费的影响，重点关注政府支出对私人消费的替代效应以及政府融资决策的中性条件。
SINCE BARRO s (1974) RESTATEMENT of the debt proposition, economists have directed considerable research toward determining whether fiscal policy can affect aggregate demand. Most of the debate, both theoretical and empirical, has focused on the net wealth content of privately held government debt. Although existing research has hardly provided a definitive resolution to this debate (see, for example, Blinder and Deaton 1985, Bernheim 1987, Barro 1989), recent efforts (Feldstein 1982, Kormendi 1983, Aschauer 1985, Leiderman and Razin 1988) have followed Bailey (1971) and broadened the scope of the investigation to include the possibility that government expenditures substitute for private consumption expenditures. In doing so, Feldstein, Kormendi, and Aschauer have shown that fiscal neutrality implies certain restrictions on private consumption behavior. The first of these restrictions is what Feldstein (1982) calls ex ante crowding-out. For complete ex ante crowding-out, government spending on goods and services must substitute dollar-for-dollar for private spending. Consequently, an increase in government expenditures on consumption goods should lead to an equivalent decrease in private consumption expenditures. A second restriction is that government finance decisions should not affect private consumption. Barro (1974) has derived conditions under which this result will obtain. Essentially, maximizing consumers are assumed to be rational and forward-looking, accurately foreseeing future taxes implied by