When the IMF focused exclusively on policy-driven fiscal adjustments it got results that were consistent with standard Keynesian analysis. In the short run, fiscal adjustment is contractionary, with cuts in spending being more contractionary than increases in taxes. This is consistent with both the theoretical view that spending will more directly impact the economy than taxes and also a large amount of research that has found higher multipliers for changes in spending than changes in taxes. 5 In the same vein as the Alesina work, Goldman Sachs recently produced an analysis that purports to show that fiscal adjustment can be.
