The authors study the effects of changes in uncertainty about future fiscal policy on aggregate economic activity. Fiscal deficits and public debt have risen sharply in the wake of the financial crisis. While these developments make fiscal consolidation inevitable, there is considerable...

The authors analyze the effects of government spending cuts on economic activity in an environment of severe fiscal strain, as reflected by a sizeable risk premium on government debt. Specifically, they consider a "sovereign risk channel," through which sovereign default risk spills over to the...

Presented at the Inaugural meeting of the Global Society of Fellows of the Global Interdependence Center, Banque de France, Paris, France, March 26, 2012

Presented at the U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, The Initiative on Global Markets University of Chicago Booth School of Business, New York, New York, February 24, 2012

Presented by Charles I. Plosser, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, SNS (Center for Business and Policy Studies) and SIFR (The Institute for Financial Research), Stockholm, Sweden

Reasoning within the New Neoclassical Synthesis (NNS) we previously recommended that price stability should be the primary objective of monetary policy. We called this a neutral policy because it keeps output at its potential, defined as the outcome of an imperfectly competitive real business...

This paper studies the dynamics of a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model near the zero lower bound (ZLB) on nominal interest rates. In addition to the standard targeted-inflation equilibrium, we consider a deflation equilibrium as well as a Markov sunspot...

According to conventional wisdom, fiscal policy is more effective under a fixed than under a flexible exchange rate regime. In this paper the authors reconsider the transmission of shocks to government spending across these regimes within a standard New Keynesian model of a small open economy....