Showing 1 - 10 of 39
This paper analyzes the contributions of monetary and fiscal policy to postwar economic recoveries. We find that the Federal Reserve typically responds to downturns with prompt and large reductions in interest rates. Discretionary fiscal policy, in contrast, rarely reacts before the trough in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013309225
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013223567
This paper demonstrates how time consistency of the Ramsey policy - the optimal fiscal and monetary policy under commitment - can be achieved. Each government should leave its successor with a unique maturity structure for the nominal and indexed debt, such that the marginal benefit of a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013232768
functioning of the economy and the effects of policy. We document the changes in beliefs using contemporaneous discussions of the … economy and policy by monetary and fiscal policymakers and, for the period since the late 1960s, using the Federal Reserve …'s internal forecasts. We find that policymakers' understanding of the economy has not exhibited steady improvement. Instead, the …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013322316
This paper surveys the recent literature on the theory of macroeconomic policy. We study the effect of various incentive constraints on the policy making process, such as lack of credibility, political opportunism, political ideology, and divided government. The survey is organized in three...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013323999
We evaluate the Friedman-Schwartz hypothesis that a more accommodative monetary policy could have greatly reduced the severity of the Great Depression. To do this, we first estimate a dynamic, general equilibrium model using data from the 1920s and 1930s. Although the model includes eight...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013309234
This paper develops the quantitative implications of optimal fiscal policy in a business cycle model. In a stationary equilibrium the ex ante tax rate on capital income is approximately zero. There is an equivalence class of ex post capital income tax rates and bond policies that support a given...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013114944
The US government has recently conducted large scale purchases of assets and implemented policies that reduced the cost of funds to financial institutions. Arguably these policies have helped to correct credit market dysfunctions, allowing interest rate spreads to shrink and output to begin a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013123690
barriers' to trade in goals, changes the distribution of labor earnings in the economy, which again has a political, as well as …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012776951
In OECD countries over the period 1980–2017, countries with lower debt-to-GDP ratios responded to financial distress with much more expansionary fiscal policy and suffered much less severe aftermaths. Two lines of evidence together suggest that the relationship between the debt ratio and the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012871942