The fall in the U.S. public debt/GDP ratio from 106% in 1946 to 23% in 1974 is often attributed to high rates of economic growth. This paper examines the roles of three other factors: primary budget surpluses, surprise inflation, and pegged interest rates before the Fed-Treasury Accord of 1951....

Expansionary fiscal policies have increased significantly following the subprime crisis in 2007 and the COVID-19 crisis, leading to fiscal dominance concerns, where a growing share of monetary authorities may be forced to deviate from policy targets to accommodate fiscal policies. Meanwhile,...

"Firms in Africa report "regulatory and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to their growth. We argue that often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals; firm-specific policy actions that can be influenced by firm actions (e.g. bribes) and...

China's remarkable run of persistently high growth in recent decades is all the more stunning in light of the country's low levels of financial and institutional development, state-dominated economy, and nondemocratic government. Notwithstanding the inefficient and risky growth model, the...

This paper constructs high-frequency and timely income distributions for the United States. We develop a methodology to combine the information contained in high-frequency public data sources--including monthly household and employment surveys, quarterly censuses of employment and wages, and...

Screening requirements are common features of fraud and corruption mitigation efforts around the world. Yet imposing these requirements involves trade-offs between higher administrative costs, delayed benefits, and exclusion of genuine beneficiaries on one hand and lower fraud on the other. We...

This paper reviews recent literature on China's macroeconomic development, emphasizing the critical role of the gradualist approach over the past four decades. Beyond China's structural transformation, we explore various aspects such as high saving rates, the housing boom, an expanding current...

In this essay, I analyze Salvador Allende's economic policies in Chile during the early 1970s. I argue that the explosion of inflation during his administration (above 1,500% on a six-month annualized measure) was predictable, and that the government's response to it, through massive and strict...