This paper estimates the effects of tax changes on the U.K. economy. Identification is achieved by isolating the ‘exogenous’ tax policy shocks in the post-war U.K. economy using a narrative strategy as in Romer and Romer (2010). The resulting tax changes are shown to be unforecastable on the...

Traditional theories of integration such as the optimum currency area approach attribute a prominent role to international labour mobility in coping with relative economic fluctuations between countries. However, recent studies on international migration have overlooked the role of short-run...

We document the empirical fact that asset prices in the consumption-goods and investment-goods sector behave almost identically in the US economy. In order to derive the cyclical behavior of the equity returns in these two sectors, we consider a standard two-sector real-business cycle model with...

This paper is motivated by the rising interest in assessing the effect of disruptions in resources and environmental conditions on economic growth. Such an assessment requires, ultimately, the use of truly integrated models of the climate and economic systems. For these purposes, we have...

According to empirical studies, the life cycle of labor supply volatility exhibits a U-shaped pattern. This may lead to the conclusion that demographic change induces a drop in output volatility. We present an overlapping generations model that replicates the empirically observed pattern and...

Using a two-sector estimated DSGE model with a financial channel we show the sector where TFP news arrives matters for its propagation and quantitative importance. Anticipated increases in TFP expected to arrive in the consumption sector are expansionary while those in the investment sector are...

Firms devote significant resources to maintain and repair thei existing capital. Within a real business cycle model featuring arguably small aggregate increasing returns, this paper assesses the stabilizing effects of fiscal policies with a maintenance expenditure allowance. In this setup, firms...

In the Great Recession most OECD countries used short-time work (publicly subsidized working time reductions) to counteract a steep increase in unemployment. We show that short-time work can actually save jobs. However, there is an important distinction to be made: While the rule-based component...

This paper studies how income-based, progressive taxes and transfers may reduce aggregate volatility by protecting the economy against expectation-driven business cycles. Eliminating “local” sunspots that are arbitrarily close to an indeterminate steady state requires, for sensible parameter...