106/2012 Nicholas Crafts and Terence C Mills

We report estimates of the fiscal multiplier for interwar Britain based on quarterly data and time-series econometrics. We find that the government-expenditure multiplier was in the range 0.3 to 0.9 even during the period that interest rates were at the lower bound. The scope for a ‘Keynesian solution’ to recession was much less than is generally supposed. In the later 1930s but not before Britain’s exit from the gold standard, there was a ‘fiscal free lunch’ in that deficit-financed government spending would have improved public finances enough to pay for the interest on the extra debt.

Economic History

European Review of Economic History

http://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heu024