A Preliminary Assessment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's Clean Energy Package

摘要

In December 2007, the US economy began to contract, and over the course of the following year, economic conditions deteriorated to an extent unseen in the country since the 1930s. Between the start of the recession and February 2009, the economy lost about 4.6 million jobs (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011). Gross domestic product (GDP) experienced a greater percentage decline over the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 than during any six-month period since the late 1940s (Bureau of Economic Analysis 2011). Bond markets revealed expectations of default for nearly four in ten investment-grade corporate bonds (Summers 2009). By February 2009, consumer confidence had fallen to the lowest level recorded in the more than forty years of consumer surveys (Rooney 2009).