The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act encompassed a substantial federally-funded state-level fiscal stimulus. The objectives of the Act were to increase employment and stimulate economic growth. While the level of the fiscal stimulus was potentially endogenous, a direct analysis of its effects leads to biased results. To circumvent this, the effect of the stimulus on economic growth was studied using instrumental variable estimation, since the distribution of a large part of the funds was based on conditions exogenous to the economic downturn. A cross-state two-stage least squares estimation procedure was used to quantify the effect of the stimulus on economic growth and to show that the robust significant positive effect of the stimulus amounts to a fiscal multiplier of almost 1.6. The results further show that the positive effect of stimulus spending remained significant until the end of the first term of the Obama presidency.

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州级联邦刺激基金和经济增长：美国复苏和再投资法案

《美国复苏与再投资法案》包括一项由联邦政府提供资金的州级财政刺激计划。该法案的目标是增加就业和刺激经济增长。虽然财政刺激的水平可能是内生的，但对其影响的直接分析会导致结果有偏差。为了避免这种情况，我们使用工具变量估计来研究刺激对经济增长的影响，因为大部分资金的分配是基于经济衰退的外生条件。跨州两阶段最小二乘估计程序用于量化刺激对经济增长的影响，并表明刺激的强劲显着积极影响相当于近 1.6 的财政乘数。