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| Stimulating Consumption: Fiscal Expenditure Structural Adjustment and the Coordination of Structural Monetary Policy |
| WANG Fang, LIU Yaoju, WANG Chenxi
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| School of Finance/Center for Financial Policy Studies, Renmin University of China; School of Economics, Beijing Technology and Business University |
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Abstract To address the challenge of insufficient effective demand, stimulating consumption has become a core priority of China's macroeconomic policy. Stimulating consumption requires simultaneous efforts from both the demand and the supply sides. On the one hand, the demand for consumption can be boosted by improving the well-being of people. On the other hand, the supply of consumption can be improved by facilitating the innovation of goods and services. How to achieve consumption stimulation and social welfare improvement through coordinated efforts on both demand and supply sides constitutes a critical topic that requires in-depth investigation.
Fiscal policy, which can provide direct targeted support for key areas, has unique advantages in addressing economic downturns and structural problems. However, as China's fiscal imbalance becomes increasingly prominent, it is essential to optimize the fiscal expenditure structure and improve fiscal spending efficiency. Meanwhile, structural monetary policy can incentivize financial institutions to provide financing for targeted sectors. Nonetheless, due to its endogeneity, structural monetary policy must be implemented in coordination with other policy instruments to stimulate consumption and expand aggregate demand. This paper aims to construct a multi-sector DSGE model based on China's macroeconomic characteristics to systematically analyze the effects of fiscal expenditure restructuring on consumption from both the demand and supply sides, and further explores the coordination mechanism of structural monetary policy with fiscal expenditure structural adjustment. In particular, China's economy exhibits a distinct vertical industrial structure, with state-owned enterprises largely concentrated in the upstream sectors of the industrial chain and private enterprises mainly located in the downstream sectors. Private enterprises, with their strong innovation capability and rapid adaptability to market changes, serve as a key driver of improvements in consumption supply. Accordingly, this paper incorporates a vertical industrial structure into the model to clarify the impact of various policies on the supply side of consumption.
Based on the evolution of China's fiscal expenditure structure over the past decade, this paper classifies fiscal expenditure into three categories: livelihood expenditure, infrastructure expenditure, and government consumption. We examine the impacts of two structural adjustment approaches on consumption demand and consumption supply: (1) expanding the livelihood expenditure and cutting traditional infrastructure expenditure at the same time, and (2) expanding the livelihood expenditure and cutting government consumption at the same time. Increasing the livelihood expenditure can stimulate people's willingness to consume on the demand side. Infrastructure expenditure generates demand for intermediate goods produced by state-owned enterprises, thus reducing such expenditure helps redirect investment and credit funds from the state-owned sector to the private sector, thereby improving consumption supply. Under the vertical industrial structure, both government and households consume final goods produced by the private sector, hence cutting government consumption also contributes to improving consumption supply for households.
This paper employs impulse response analysis and comparative static analysis to examine the short-run and long-run effects of fiscal expenditure structural adjustment, respectively. The results indicate both approaches can effectively boost consumption demand. In the short run, Approach (1) delivers a more significant expansion of consumption supply. In the long run, however, public capital accumulated through infrastructure expenditure generates positive spillover effects on the production sector. Consequently, the long-run boosting effect of Approach (1), which cuts infrastructure expenditure, is weaker than that of Approach (2). Therefore, increasing livelihood expenditure and reducing government consumption at the same time can better achieve the coordinated expansion of consumption supply and demand in the long run.
Given that both approaches of fiscal expenditure structural adjustment can increase the credit spread for the private sector, this paper argues that implementing structural monetary policy alongside such fiscal expenditure structural adjustment can provide targeted liquidity to the private sector, thereby better leveraging the role of fiscal expenditure structural adjustment in promoting consumption supply.
These findings carry important policy implications. First, stimulating consumption requires coordinated fiscal and monetary policies. Second, efforts should be made to promote sound interaction between supply and demand, with coordinated measures from both sides. Third, fiscal expenditure structure should be optimized by increasing livelihood expenditure and cutting government consumption.
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Received: 25 October 2024
Published: 02 June 2026
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