China’s Fiscal Stimulus Package for the Current International Crisis: What does 1996–2006 Tell Us?

Abstract

This paper uses Bi-Directional Reiterative Truncated Projected Least Squares (BD-RTPLS) to estimate annual ∂GPP/∂G and %∂GPP/%∂G multipliers for China’s 31 provinces between 1996 and 2006 (GPP = Gross Provincial Product and G = government spending in the province). In order to account for the influence of omitted variables, BD-RTPLS produces a separate ∂GPP/∂G and %∂GPP/%∂G estimate for every observation in the data set. I find that ∂GPP/∂G and %∂GPP/%∂G were highest in 1996 while China was drastically cutting government spending to curb inflation, were lowest in 1997 during the Asian Financial Crisis, slowly rose between 1998 and 2004, and then declined some in 2005 and 2006 when the Chinese yuan was slowly appreciating.

Keywords

fiscal policy / China / crises / stimulus