Cyclical Fluctuation, Growth, and Stabilization: An Empirical Investigation of Dual Policy Objectives in Bangladesh

In conventional economics, two types of macroeconomic policy i.e. fiscal policy and monetary policy are used to streamline the business cycle. This paper has examined the cyclical behavior of these variables over the business cycle of Bangladesh. The objective of this examination is to show whether policies (fiscal policy and monetary policy) in Bangladesh are taken with a motive to stabilize the economy or only to promote economic growth. In other words, it has examined whether the policies in Bangladesh are procyclical or countercyclical or acyclical. Hodrick Prescott (HP) filter has been used to separate the cyclical component of considered variables. Both correlation and regression-based analysis have provided that in Bangladesh government expenditure and interest rates behave procyclically, but money supply behaves acyclically over the business cycle. Besides, this paper has tried to identify the long-term as well as the short-term relationship between real GDP and the macroeconomic policy variables with the help of the Johansen cointegration test, vector error correction model (VECM), and block exogeneity Wald test. Through these analyses, this study has found that fiscal policy has a significant impact on GDP growth both in the short-run and long-run. In the case of monetary policy, although the interest rate has an impact on real output both in the short-run and long-run, the money supply has neither a short-run nor long-run effect on output growth.