"Death of a Theory," presented in St. Louis. January 13, 2012.

"SNEAK PREVIEW: Death of a Theory." Presented at the Korea-America Economic Association, Chicago, Illinois. January 7, 2012.

Policymakers often use measures of tax incidence (generational accounts) as criteria for policy selection. We use a quantitative model of optimal intergenerational policy to evaluate the ability of the tax incidence metric to capture the identity of recipients and contributors and the magnitudes...

The main rationale for fiscal policy rules is the concern for long term sustainability of public finances, that in a monetary union may affect the other members. Among many other criticisms, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) has been seen as contradictory or incomplete because it focuses on...

This paper examines the impact of macroeconomic policy shocks in a Real- Business-Cycle Model with money. In addition to technology shocks, I include government consumption, government investment, tax rate and monetary policy as sources of random disturbances. Money is introduced in a...

Researchers have used cross-state differences to assess the jobs impact of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the Recovery Act). Existing studies find that the Act's broadly- directed spending (i.e. excluding tax cuts) increased employment, at a cost-per-job of roughly three to...

A key question that has arisen during recent debates is whether government spending multipliers are larger during times when resources are idle. This paper seeks to shed light on this question by analyzing new quarterly historical data covering multiple large wars and depressions in the U.S. and...

In this paper we study competition among non-benevolent local governments for mobile firms and evaluate the consequences of imposing alternative regimes of competition. In our model politicians act as regulators that offer incentives in the form of recommended output levels and socially-costly...

The massive interests of economic literature about the privatisation gave a notable impulse to the discussion about this theme in the pre and post privatisation firms performance. Basically in every case after privatisation the level of profit increases. Does this mean that privatisation is...