ABSTRACT

Donald Trump was the President of the United States from January 2017 to January 2021. During that time, except for the period since spring 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic took its toll on economic activity, the US economy has been doing very well according to key indicators like the unemployment rate and GDP growth. Does Trump deserve credit for the booming economy? To address this question, we develop a counterfactual scenario for how the US economy would have evolved without Trump – we let a matching algorithm determine which combination of other economies best resembles the pre-election path of the US economy. We then compare the performance of the US economy during Trump’s Presidency to this synthetic “doppelganger”. There is little evidence for a Trump effect.

摘要

唐纳德·特朗普于 2017 年 1 月至 2021 年 1 月担任美国总统。在此期间，除了自 2020 年春季 COVID-19 大流行对经济活动造成影响以来，美国经济一直表现良好。失业率和GDP增长等关键指标。特朗普的经济繁荣值得称赞吗？为了解决这个问题，我们为没有特朗普的美国经济如何发展制定了一个反事实情景——我们让匹配算法确定其他经济体的哪种组合最类似于美国经济的选举前路径。然后，我们将特朗普总统任期内美国经济的表现与这个合成的“分身”进行比较。几乎没有证据表明特朗普效应。