Government Size and Automatic Stabilizers: International and Intranational Evidence

This paper studies the role of automatic stabilizers using a sample of OECD countries and US states. We find that there is a strong and robust negative correlation between measures of government size and the volatility of output. This correlation is robust to the inclusion of a large set of controls as well as to alternative methods of detrending and estimation. The economic significance of this relationship is larger for the US states.

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