Government Spending and Private Activity

Valerie A. Ramey

NBER Working Paper No. 17787
Issued in January 2012

---- Acknowledgments ----

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the NBER conference "Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis" in Milan in December 2011. I am grateful to Roger Farmer, Garey Ramey, and David Romer for discussions that led to the questions analyzed in this paper and to Alberto Alesina, Francesco Giavazzi, Roberto Perotti and participants in the conference for their comments. I thank Jonas Fisher for sharing the Fisher-Peters defense excess returns variable. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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