On 3 June 2020, the German government announced a EUR 130 billion fiscal stimulus package to stimulate market demand and jumpstart the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2020. The most prominent measure of this package is an unconventional fiscal policy in the form of a temporary VAT rates cut for six months, from 1 July to 31 December 2020. Employing a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework, we study the efficiency of the VAT tax rates cut for ameliorating the consequences of the pandemic recession.
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