The purpose of this exploratory study is to attempt to identify particular public policies which have the potential to increase the economic viability of smaller metropolitan areas and cities. We identify characteristics associated with smaller metro areas that performed better-than-expected...

This paper simulates job and fiscal impacts of Michigan’s MEGA tax credit program for job creation. Under plausible assumptions about how such credits affect business location decisions, the net costs per job created of the MEGA program are simulated to be of modest size. The job creation...

Private pension provision faces the challenging task of providing stable income streams during retirement. The challenge has increased markedly in the last decades due to volatile financial markets, falling interest rates and the withdrawal of employers and external insurers as risk bearers of...

We study the effects of government spending by using a structural, large dimensional, dynamic factor model. We find that the government spending shock is non-fundamental for the variables commonly used in the structural VAR literature, so that its impulse response functions cannot be...

The paper explores the case for monetary and fiscal unification. Monetary policy suffers from an inflation bias because the monetary authorities are not able to commit. With international risk-sharing in a fiscal union, fiscal discipline suffers from moral hazard. An inflation target alleviates...