Mafia and Public Spending: Evidence on the Fiscal Multiplier from a Quasi-Experiment
利用意大利打击政治腐败和黑手党渗透市议会导致地方公共支出意外大幅收缩的准实验，估计省级支出削减的产出乘数为1.5，考虑滞后支出后升至1.9，表明地方支出调整对经济活动影响显著。
A law issued to combat political corruption and Mafia infiltration of city councils in Italy has resulted in episodes of large, unanticipated, temporary contractions in local public spending. Using these episodes as instruments, we estimate the output multiplier of spending cuts at provincial level—controlling for national monetary and fiscal policy, and holding the tax burden of local residents constant—to be 1.5. Assuming that lagged spending is exogenous to current output brings the estimate of the overall multiplier up to 1.9. These results suggest that local spending adjustment may be quite consequential for local activity.