“I’m curious how you distinguish a true increase in consumption and production from the artificial stimulus. Do you have some way to tell that the spark has ‘caught”?”

Well, I think it is a question of judgement. You need to look at how severe the contraction actually was following the Lehman Bros folding, and how well domestic consumption held up. I would single out Norway and France of two clear cases where stimulus can work, due to the fact that autonomous domestic consumption wasn’t previously absolutely “fried” by the earlier bubbles, and where the population isn’t now so old (Germany and Japan) that trying to raise domestic consumption is harder than having to raise the dead.

That is to say, I do have criteria, that more or less work for me, but are actually rather hard to spell out formally. First off, lets see if my intuitions are confirmed in the future, then I will take the argument rather further.

I’m curious how you distinguish a true increase in consumption and production from the artificial stimulus. Do you have some way to tell that the spark has ‘caught”?