Monday, December 08, 2008

Designing A Keynesian Stimulus Plan

Some version of this New York Times article contains the following passage:
"A blueprint for such spending can be found in a study financed by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts and the Center for American Progress, a Washington research organization founded by John D. Podesta, who is a co-chairman of Mr. Obama's transition team.

The study, released in November after months of work, found that a $100 billion investment in clean energy could create 2 million jobs over two years." -- Peter Baker and John M. Broder, New York Times, 7 December 2008 [Links inserted by Robert Vienneau]
I went looking for this study, but was unable to find it. The PERI report, "Green Recovery: A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy" (by Robert Pollin, Heidi Garrett-Peltier, James Heintz, and Helen Scharber) is dated September 2008. The CAP report, "How to Spend $350 Billion in a First Year of Stimulus and Recovery" (by Will Straw and Michael Ettinger) is dated 5 December 2008.

Based on the reports I found, I doubt the report referred to by the New York Times article goes into details on the analytical justifications for its figures, which I'd like to see. I know that, in principle, one could create a transactions table from use and make tables. From such a transactions table, one can calculate multipliers by sectors and some measure of environmental impact. But I do not understand all the accounting conventions and approximations one would have to make to get such practical analyses from the national income accounts.

No comments: