There is a common theme in the recently released Department of Finance June Fiscal Monitor, which reports on the U.S. federal government’s year-to-date spending, and a CNNMoney report on government spending.

To date, government stimulus spending on infrastructure, which many felt was necessary if not essential to get the North American economy out of recession, has been negligible.

However, despite this lack of fiscal stimulus (which will eventually kick in), there is a strong consensus that the U.S. and Canadian economies will start to expand in the current (third) quarter.

This development (i.e. the fact that the North American economic recovery has started before massive U.S. and Canadian economic stimulus has had any significant impact), does raise the question of the efficacy of increased government spending to shorten economic downturns.

Indeed, in a research paper — Changes in Business Cycles: Evidence and Explanations (Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1999) — Christina Romer, current head of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors, found that “real macroeconomic indicators have not become dramatically more stable between the pre-World War I and the post-World War II eras and recessions have become only slightly less severe.”

Furthermore, Romer notes, “recessions have not become noticeably shorter.”

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Alan Reynolds, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, indicated that in the U.S. (and in other countries) recessions have always ended without government stimulus.

Often they end more quickly than during the period following the 1930’s New Deal, which signaled the start of massive government spending to “stimulate” the economy.

To determine if more government involvement in the economy reduced the impact of economic downturns, Reynolds compared the recent economic performance relative to the size of government spending in 13 major economies.

Based on this comparison, it appears that countries which devote more of their resources to government spending have, on balance, suffered more during the most recent of economic recessions than those which spend less.

Perhaps, to quote Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Less is more.”