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MPC and multiplier

The expenditure and tax multipliers depend on how much people spend out of an additional dollar of income, which is called the marginal propensity to consume (MPC). In this video, you'll explore the intuition behind the MPC using a simple economic example, and will learn how to use the MPC to calculate the expenditure multiplier. Created by Sal Khan.

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  • blobby green style avatar for user Woong Chang
    1. Is having a high MPC is always a good thing for the economy?

    2. Can MPC be influenced by monetary or fiscal policies? In other words, how can we increase or decrease MPC?
    (18 votes)
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    • blobby green style avatar for user Atiloluwa
      MPC can be influenced by the policies in a country because of what is called MPS, Marginal Propensity Save. using the example of MPC as 60% or 0.6, MPS would be 40 or 0.4 whereas MPS is affected by policies that aim to either increase or reduce the people's saving habits
      (11 votes)
  • aqualine ultimate style avatar for user Bijou
    I don't understand, wouldn't the $1000 eventually be used up?
    If you use 60% of it, then I use 60% of what you pay me, then you use 60% of what I gave you, wouldn't someone eventually run into negative numbers AKA debt? Thanks ahead of time. :)
    (10 votes)
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  • leaf green style avatar for user ydavidson09
    At the end of the video sal says if you spend an extra dollar in the economy givin the MPC thats what the total output would increase. But how does this plug back into Y=C+I+G+NX? Does this mean if we spend an extra $1000 that Y would go up $2500?
    (3 votes)
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    • leaf orange style avatar for user Alanna Hardman
      The C+I+G+NX is a short form of an expanded equation. Just considereing C,
      Total C actually = Co + c (Y-T) where Y-T is your disposable income ie income after tax.
      Thus part of consumption (Co) does not depend on income and part of it does c Y.
      c is the marginal propensity to consume. c = delta C/delta Y. It tells us how much Consumption will change for a given change in income eg if income (Y) rises by $1 and total Consumption changes by 60 cents then c = .6.

      The reason you cant see where it plugs back in is because you are not looking at the expanded equation. If we plug it back in properly the equation becomes

      Y = Co + c(Y-T) + I + G + NX.
      Note - the equation is capable of being expanded further depending on assumptions eg NX may not be all exogenous and nether might tax (in fact part of total taxes commonly depends on income and part does not ie total T = non income taxes plus income taxes = To + tY

      You can see using the expanded equation that if c=.6 and the change in Y is plus 1000 then initially the Y on the left side would grow by 600 but we need to then add that 600 to the Y on the right hand side so there will be further increases due to the feedback loop in the equation.
      The final change in Y = 1/1-c X 1000 = 1/1-.6 * 1000 = 2500

      (assuming that t = 0 ie there are no income taxes which will reduce the final change)
      (8 votes)
  • leaf green style avatar for user adam keller
    If the multiplier is 1/(1-MPC)
    With an MPC of 0.8 (saving 20% of your income), this would yield a multiplier of 5. But this is way too high; most estimates of the keynesian multiplier are under 2. How can this be?
    (3 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Noah Chen
    How does inflation factor into this? I imagine that since the builder and the farmer are getting paid more, they're also producing more. But isn't there a point at which the farmer or the builder decides that prices are too high and that s/he should wait until they drop, lowering his/her MPC?
    (4 votes)
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    • leaf orange style avatar for user Alanna Hardman
      That is simply an exogenous shock and exogenous shocks can be unpredictable. What we can predict is the effect on Y after the shock. If the farmer decides to stop spending and wait for prices to fall, then he will reduce either his exogenous consumption (Co) or his Investment (I) typically. In either case Y will fall by 1/1-c * the change in either Co or Io
      (the o subscript indicating that the variable is independant of income ie that part of either the builder's or the farmer's spending that is not determined by his income. In the example you gave it is determined by price ie they are waiting for the prices to drop).

      Of course the farmer and builder may also decide to lower the proportion they consume at every income level (c) and raise the proportion they save of their income (whilst waiting for lower prices). In this case the c would fall and 1-c (marginal propensity to save) would rise.
      (4 votes)
  • old spice man green style avatar for user Gene Bellinger
    While the $1,000 end up creating $2,500 worth of transactions in the economy don't you end up with an economy within which there's no money left to buy goods and services because each party is holding funds?
    (4 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Jennifer Abner
    Okay so how come the answer is 2500 and not 2305.60?
    When using the equation:
    1000 + 0.6*1000 + 0.6^2*1000 + 0.6^3*1000 +0.6^4*1000
    =2305.6
    (3 votes)
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  • old spice man green style avatar for user Alex.R.OMalley
    Does the MPC "keep going forever" or eventually stop? Especially since this is such a simple economy.
    (3 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user lale.tango
    If any increase in Y is divided in consumption and saving, and saving equals to investment. Then if there is an increase in spending, besides the additional consumption caused by MPC, should the saved part also goes into investment and then also increase people's income and then continuous cycle??
    (2 votes)
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    • blobby green style avatar for user KEREM TUZCUOGLU
      I'm not quite sure whether I understood your questions completely. But here is the answer to what I understood:

      Y is divided into C or S. If Y is fixed then the only way to increase C is to decrease S. A decrease in S means a decrease in Investment, which means less income for the next period. Therefore, next period's Y is decreased, which results in a decreased C next period. Hence, we again come back to our original equilibrium point.
      (2 votes)
  • mr pink red style avatar for user OortCloud
    At video 8.5, the 2.5 multiplier has total output at 2500 but if you multiply each level of extra I by the MPC (0.6) total output will add up to the same amount as when you multiply each level by powers and then add up products and that answer is 2305.60. So where or how or why is 2500 a correct reflection of this economy’s total output?
    (2 votes)
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    • aqualine ultimate style avatar for user Cole B
      The total output he has equals up to 2500 because theoretically, they would keep doing this until they are giving each other infinitesimal amounts of dollars. Which, if using the formula of a geometric series, adds up to 2500 dollars. Thats what the +........ means. Is that it would theoretically go on forever, and since the percentage is less than 1, the number would get smaller and smaller and smaller until it reach nearly zero.
      (2 votes)

Video transcript

Going with my habit of overly simplified economy, let's then imagine an economy that has only two actors in it. So it has Mr. Farmer right over here. Do my best to draw the farmer, maybe he has a mustache of some kind. So it has Mr. Farmer right over here. He's got a hat on. So that is the farmer in this economy. And then let's say we also have a builder. So this economy, they're producing two things. They're producing food, and this builder can help maintain stuff. So maybe he has a lot more, maybe this is the builder right over here. So this is Mr. Builder. And let's say, for the sake of what we're going to do here, let's say that for this economy, it's kind of a constant. If either of these fellows gets an extra dollar to spend, he's going to spend 60% of it. And so, what I'm going to do is introduce a formal word that really is just another way of saying that. In this economy, the marginal propensity to consume is-- and I'll put that in parentheses, it's often referred to as MPC-- that is equal to you could either say 60% or is equal to 0.6. And all this is saying is that if someone in this economy somehow finds another dollar in their pocket, they're going to spend 0.6 of that. Or they're going to spend 60% of that. So if you give the builder-- if a builder all of the sudden gets an extra dollar, he's going to spend another $0.60 on other things. And the person to really spend it with is the farmer. If the farmer gets another dollar, he's going to spend 60% of that, or $0.60, with the builder. Now given this assumption, let's think about what would happen in this economy if all of a sudden one of them decided to increase their spending a little bit. So we'll assume that they were all living happily. The economy was kind of at a steady state. And let's say the farmer discovers a sock in a drawer that he didn't realize was there. And it's got a little bit of their agreed upon currency. Maybe the agreed upon currency in this island is a dollar. They've maybe got a stash when their shipwrecked on this, or whatever. So the agreed upon currency is actually the dollar. And the farmer discovers that he's got-- he discovers a big pile of dollars in his sock. And he says, well, I'm going to spend $1,000. I need to do some repairs to my buildings. So we have this kind of increase in spending that's going on. So the farmer says, hey, I'm going to spend $1,000, and I'm going to give it to the builder. Now the builder says, well, you know, gee, I've just gotten $1,000. I have a marginal propensity to consume of 60%, or 0.6. I'm going to spend 60% of that. So he's going to spend, and the only person he can spend it with is the farmer. He's going to spend 60% times $1,000, which is equal to $600. Well, now the farmer says, well, I got above and beyond the $1,000 that I just spent. Somehow the economy seems to be picking up. The builder just spent $600 more on me then he would have otherwise done. He bought that much more food. I have $600 more. I have a marginal propensity to consume of 0.6 or 60%. So I will spend 60% of that $600 that I just got. And so it will be 60% of this thing. So it will be 60-- I'll write it as a decimal-- it'll be 0.6 times this thing, which is 0.6 times 1,000. Or you could say it is 60% of the $600, which is going to be equal to $360. Well, now the builder says, well, I got that initial $1,000. I spent $600 of that. But now I've got another $360, and I have a marginal propensity to consume of 0.6. So I'm going to spend 60% of that. So above and beyond this spending, he also spends 60% of this right over here. And 60% of this is 0.6 times this whole thing. So he's going to spend 0.6 times this thing-- and I'll write it in green-- times 0.6 times $1,000. Now this number right over here, I don't know what this is, is it 60% of $360. I don't know, I could get a calculator to figure out what that is exactly. So let's say that I have 0.6-- we could actually say 0.6 to the third power. Or let's just write that-- 0.6 to the third. And then I'm going to multiply that times 1,000, gives us $216. So this guy-- so this right over here gives us $216. This guy says, hey got another $216, I'm going to spend 60% of that. And I think you see where this is going. And 60% of that is going to be 0.6 times this whole quantity. So it's going to be-- I'll write it here-- it's going to be 0.6 times this thing, which was already 0.6 times 0.6 times 0.6. So you're going to have 0.6 times 0.6 to the third power. That's going to be 0.6 to the fourth power times 1,000, which is whatever 60% of 216 is. And I'll just calculated it. So times 0.6 gives us $130, is going to get $129.60. Now this guy, the builder, say, I got another $129.60. I'm going to spend 60% of that. And it goes on and on and on. So given this, let's think about how much from that incremental increase of spending of $1,000, how much total new production and spending happened in this economy? So the way to think about that, so the total-- and we could view it either way. Remember, you could view kind of the GDP. You could view that as the aggregate output. You could view that as the aggregate income, aggregate expenditure. These are all views because really the economy is a very circular thing. One person's expenditure turns into another person's income. But we could say total output here, measured in our agreed upon currency, which is let's say dollars. This is now going to be, it was this original $1,000 that the farmer spent for the builder. So it's going to be that original $1,000 plus this first, right over here this 0.6 times 1,000 that the builder spent, that $600. So that's 0.6 times 1,000 plus-- then we had this time the farmer said, I'm going to spend 60% of that. So that was 0.6 squared times 1,000. Plus 0.6 squared times 1,000. And then this guy said, oh, I'm going to spend 60% of that now that I got that 0.6 squared times 1,000. So he's going to take 60% of that and spend it. And that gave us that 0.6 to the third power times 1,000. Plus 0.6 to the third power times 1,000. And then the last one we did, it would keep going on and on forever, theoretically, is you're going to have plus 0.6 to the fourth power times 1,000. And this would keep going on and on forever. We could then would be plus 0.6 to the fifth power times 1,000, plus 0.6 to the sixth power. Keep going on and on forever. And one of the fascinating things about mathematics, and maybe the next video, I'll reprove this. I've proven this in multiple playlists, is that you can actually sum up because this value right over here is less than 1, this actually ends up being a finite sum. You can actually take this infinite sum and get a finite number. So just to simplify this, the total output that's kind of sparked by that original $1,000, we can factor out the 1,000-- I'll do this in a new color-- so we can factor out the 1,000. And we are left with-- well if we factor of 1,000 there you get 1 plus 0.6 plus 0.6 squared plus 0.6 to the third power plus 0.6 to the fourth power. And it goes on and on and on. And in the next video, maybe I'll prove it, just for fun. But this right over here, it's an infinite sum of a geometric series. And this will actually simplify to-- I'll do it in the same green color-- as 1 over 1 minus 0.6. So whatever this number is right over here, it'll be 1 minus 1 over that. And so in this case, this would be equal to 1 over 0.4. And 0.4 is 2/5. So this is equal to 1 over 2/5, which is equal to 5/2. So your total output is going to be equal to 1,000 times 5/2. Or this is the same thing as equal to 1,000 times 2 and 1/2, which is equal to 2,500. So there's two interesting ideas that are going here. One is, when people get a little bit more income, they're going to spend some of it. And that's where the marginal propensity to consume is. We're assuming it's linear, that no matter how much you give them, they're just going to spend 60% of that. And then given that, that 60%, it keeps getting multiplied and going through the economy. You essentially have this multiplier effect, that that 1,000 got spent, some fraction of that gets spent, then some fraction of that gets spent. And so what we ended up doing is that first $1,000 got multiplied by 2.5. And this 2.5 was completely a function of what the marginal propensity to consume was. So we have this relationship here is that whatever the marginal propensity to consume is, that drives the multiplier. And all the multiplier is saying is if you spend an extra dollar in this economy, given people's marginal propensity to consume, how much will that increase total output?