{"title":"Stimulus on the Home Front: The State-Level Effects of WWII Spending","authors":"Gillian Brunet","doi":"10.1162/rest_a_01432","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n I use newly-digitized contract data on U.S. war production spending over 1940-1945 to analyze the macroeconomic effects of U.S. military spending in World War II. I find personal income multipliers of 0.34 over two years and 0.49 over three years. Personal income multipliers may substantially understate GDP multipliers, perhaps by as much as 50%. Employment estimates imply costs per job-year over the same time horizons of $405,013 and $232,268 in 2015 dollars, suggesting job creation was limited. I also find evidence of negative scale effects: larger positive spending shocks are associated with systematically smaller multiplier estimates.","PeriodicalId":48456,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economics and Statistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"6","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Review of Economics and Statistics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01432","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 6
Abstract
I use newly-digitized contract data on U.S. war production spending over 1940-1945 to analyze the macroeconomic effects of U.S. military spending in World War II. I find personal income multipliers of 0.34 over two years and 0.49 over three years. Personal income multipliers may substantially understate GDP multipliers, perhaps by as much as 50%. Employment estimates imply costs per job-year over the same time horizons of $405,013 and $232,268 in 2015 dollars, suggesting job creation was limited. I also find evidence of negative scale effects: larger positive spending shocks are associated with systematically smaller multiplier estimates.
期刊介绍:
The Review of Economics and Statistics is a 100-year-old general journal of applied (especially quantitative) economics. Edited at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Review has published some of the most important articles in empirical economics.