The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. With nearly 300 released each year, working papers cover a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and national and international economic developments.
Fiscal multipliers are important tools for macroeconomic projections and policy design. In many countries, little is known about the size of multipliers, as data availability limits the scope for empirical research. For these countries, we propose a simple method-dubbed the 'bucket approach'-to come up with reasonable multiplier estimates. The approach bunches countries into groups (or 'buckets') with similar multiplier values, based on their characteristics. It also takes into account the effect of some temporary factors, such as the state of the business cycle.