We study a small open economy characterized by two empirically important frictions— incomplete financial markets and an inability of the government to commit to policy. We characterize the best sustainable fiscal policy and show that it can amplify and prolong shocks to output. In particular,...

This paper surveys the empirical research on fiscal policy analysis based on real-time data. This literature can be broadly divided in three groups that focus on: (1) the statistical properties of Revisions in fiscal data; (2) the political and institutional determinants of projection errors by...

The objective of this study is to use both static and dynamic frameworks to compare the benefits that immigrants draw from the public system with their contributions through the taxes that they pay. The main conclusion of this article is that the impact of immigration on welfare systems is weak....

Remarks by Eric S. Rosengren, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, at The Global Interdependence Center Central Banking Conference, Milan, Italy, May 16, 2013.

A fiscal shock due to a shift in taxes or in government spending will, at some point in time, constrain the future path of taxes and spending, since the government’s intertemporal budget constraint will eventually have to be met. This simple fact is surprisingly overlooked in analyses of the...

This paper provides empirical evidence showing that smaller countries tend to have more volatile government consumption for a sample of 160 countries from 1960 to 2000. The analysis also shows that country size is negatively related to the discretionary part of government consumption and to the...

In this paper we argue that any assessment on the intentional stance of fiscal policy should be based upon all the information available to policymakers at the time of fiscal planning. In particular, real-time data on the discretionary fiscal policy “instrument”, the structural primary...

This paper uses a stratified sample of firms across OECD economies over the period 1996-2004 to analyse the effects of corporate taxes on productivity and investment. Applying a differences-in-differences estimation strategy which exploits differential effects of corporate taxes on firms with...

The authors show that even when the exchange rate cannot be devalued, a small set of conventional fiscal policy instruments can robustly replicate the real allocations attained under a nominal exchange rate devaluation in a standard New Keynesian open economy environment. They perform the...