This paper explores whether and why the pandemic differentially altered women and men's consumption behavior. After the 2020 wave of lockdown restrictions were lifted, women reduced consumption more than men. Data on self-reported reasons for consuming less reveals that gender differences in...

Prospective economic developments depend on the behavior of consumer spending. A key question is whether private expenditures recover once social distancing restrictions are lifted or whether the COVID-19 crisis has a sustained impact on consumer confidence, preferences, and, hence, spending....

We explore the consequences of different financial frictions on the corporate and banking level for macroeconomic policy responsiveness to major policy measures. We show that both corporate and bank debt overhang greatly reduce the effectiveness of fiscal policy: multipliers turn negative with...

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has transformed Europe and has created an integrated pan-European economy. Much research has focused on understanding this integration process and what benefits and costs it entails. This paper identifies a political economy channel of EMU as the monetary union...

We investigate the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy using a Bayesian Structural Vector Autoregression approach. We build on a recursive identification scheme, but we: (i) include the feedback from government debt (ii); look at the impact on the composition of output; (iii) assess the...

Conventional wisdom teaches that the output response upon a fiscal expansion is higher under fixed than floating exchange rates for a small open economy. We analyse the effects of fiscal expansions using a New Keynesian model and find that this result reverses in times of sovereign default risk....

We use a threshold VAR analysis to study whether the effects of fiscal policy on economic activity differ depending on financial market conditions. In particular, we investigate the possibility of a non-linear propagation of fiscal developments according to different financial market stress...

Recent fiscal policies have aimed to stimulate household spending. In 2008, most households received one-time economic stimulus payments. In 2009, most working households received the Making Work Pay tax credit in the form of reduced withholding; other households, mainly retirees, received...