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Working Paper
The 2009 recovery act: stimulus at the extensive and intensive labor margins
This paper studies the effect of government stimulus spending on a novel aspect of the labor market: the differential impact of spending on the total wage bill versus employment. We analyze the 2009 Recovery Act via instrumental variables using a new instrument, the spending done by federal agencies that were not instructed to target funds towards harder hit regions. We find a moderate positive effect on jobs created/saved (i.e., "the extensive margin") and also a significant increase in wage payments to workers whose job status was safe without Recovery Act funds (i.e., "the intensive ...