proxy formoney supply), 3-month interbank rate (as our interest rate instrument)
and the stock market indices for these three countries, which
are the DAX 30 for Germany, FTSE All Share for the UK and the Dow
Jones for the US. The exogenous shock, which is approximated by the
global economic activity index (GEA), is based on the dry cargo freight
rates and is constructed by Lutz Kilian (see, Kilian, 2009). All variables
are real, seasonally adjusted and are expressed in growth rates.
It is worth noting that there is no consensus in the literature with regard
to the identification of themost appropriatemeasure to capture fiscal
policy innovations (i.e. expenditure, taxation or borrowing — see,
Afonso and Sousa, 2011). Furthermore, Fatas and Mihov (2001) use
changes in government expenditure to capture fiscal policy shocks.
There are two advantages of using public expenditure rather than a cyclically
adjusted fiscal deficit or tax revenues. Firstly, different theories
imply different economic dynamics following a change in public expenditure,
while the effects of public revenue changes are qualitatively similar
(Fatas and Mihov, 2001). Additionally, focusing on public expenditure
does not require modelling the contemporaneous interaction between
taxes and economic activity. The elasticities of government expenditure
with respect to output for our sample countries are estimated to be
zero according to sources cited in Afonso and Sousa (2009). For these reasons
government expenditure is employed in this paper to capture fiscal
policy innovations.
A visual representation of the series can be seen in Figs. 1 and 2.