摘要：The Great Recession has revived great interests in the effects of expansionary fiscal measures and in social comparison relevant for private decision. We make two contributions in this paper linking these two interests. First, we establish three empirical regularities concerning the impacts of an unanticipated government spending hike: (1) private consumption tends to rise, (2) price and inflation tend to fall, and (3) these quantity and price responses are unlikely driven by the shock's impact (if any) on total factor productivity (TFP). Second, we construct and estimate a structural model allowing social comparison in household decision-making a la the notion of Keeping up with the Joneses (KUJ) that accounts for these empirical regularities.

中文摘要：经济大衰退重新激发了人们对扩张性财政政策实施效果与私人决策相关研究的兴趣。本文的主要贡献是将这两个方向联系起来考察。具体而言，本文首先建立了有关政府意外增加支出影响的三个经验规律：（1）私人消费趋于上升；（2）价格和通胀趋于下降；（3）这些数量和价格反应不太可能对全要素生产率产生冲击。在此基础上，本文构造了一个结构模型，该模型允许在家庭决策中进行社会比较，类似于“跟上琼斯”（KUJ）的概念，可以解释这些经验规律。

嘉宾介绍：Professor Kevin X.D. Huang is Andrew and Jennifer Hoine Chair and Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University, and he previously held positions as Senior Economist and Advisor of the US Federal Reserve System. He has written on many important topics in macroeconomics, monetary economics, financial economics, open economy macro, macro-finance, macro-health, and the Chinese economy. He has published more than 50academic articles, and his work has appeared in leading economics journals, including the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Economic Theory, International Economic Review, journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and Review of Economic Dynamics. He is Editor of Atlantic Economic journal, North American Editor of Pacific Economic Review, Co-Editor of international Studies of Economics and Associate Editor of Macroeconomic Dynamics, and was previously Co-Editor of China Economic Review and of frontiers of Economics in China. and Editorial Advisor of Canadian Journal of Economics. He has served on the Board of Director for the China Forum of Macroeconomic Research since 2017. His other posts include Director of Graduate Program in Economic Development (August 2021-) and Director of Graduate Studies in Economics (2011-2014) at Vanderbilt University.