Fiscal, Investment and Export Multipliers and the COVID-19 Pandemic Slowdowns Uncertainty Factor in the First Half of 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant slowdown in the development of almost all economies in the world. In this context, the main goal of this research is to try to present changes in the value of fiscal, investment and export multipliers as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research was conducted in selected European Union countries. They are France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain. This research is based on the theory of effective demand. The values of feeds and leakages of total demand in the period from 2015 to 2020 were examined and calculated. On this basis, the individual multipliers of autonomous spending were analyzed and their changes in the first period of the COVID-19 pandemic were presented. The analyses led to a surprising conclusion: it found that the autonomous spending multipliers in some economies increased. This means that they have become ‘security buffers’ for the health of economies. This means that the increase in their value weakened the negative effects of changes in autonomous expenditure on gross domestic product.

Autonomous Expenditure Multipliers and Gross Value Added

The paper aims to answer two main questions. Is it possible to calculate and analyze fiscal, investment and export multipliers in the short term? The classic approach is mainly based on the input–output balances, which are most often published every 5 years. Is it possible to determine the impact of autonomous expenditure on the growth rate of gross value added? Research and analysis are based primarily on the principle of aggregate demand and the main assumptions of the economic Keynesian model. In the paper, I present theoretical considerations to answer research questions. I have verified the proposed method for calculating the multipliers of autonomous expenditure and the relationship between autonomous expenditure and gross value added in empirical studies. To this end, I have chosen the three economies of the Weimar Group countries. It has emerged that the proposed method allows us to examine the growth rate of value added relative to GDP in the short term, while using the fiscal, investment and export multipliers mechanism.