Any fiscal path is sustainable if future fiscal policy responds sufficiently to high deficits. Previous work found that Congress reduced the deficit during 1984-2003 when projected deficits rose. We find that this year-to-year feedback has disappeared: Congress on average during 2004-2024 did...

We provide a rationale for the observed pro-cyclicality of tax policies in emerging markets and present a novel mechanism through which tax policy amplifies the business cycle. Our explanation relies on two features of emerging markets: limited access to financial markets and limited commitment...

This paper begins with a review of the current fiscal situation and the causes of its recent deterioration. As a guide to possible policy actions, it provides extensive estimates of past responses of revenues and expenditures at the federal and state and local level. Estimates at the federal...

This paper compares fiscal cyclicality across advanced and developing countries, geographic regions as well as income levels over 1960-2016 period, then identifies factors that explain countries' government spending and tax-policy cyclicality. Public debt/tax base ratio provides a more robust...

Governments are present-biased toward spending. Fiscal rules are deficit limits that trade off commitment to not overspend and flexibility to react to shocks. We compare coordinated rules - chosen jointly by a group of countries - to uncoordinated rules. If governments' present bias is small,...

While theoretical models consistently predict that government spending shocks should lead to appreciation of the domestic currency, empirical studies have been stubbornly finding depreciation. Using daily data on U.S. defense spending (announced and actual payments), we document that the dollar...

We characterize fiscal and monetary policy in a monetary union with the potential for rollover crises in sovereign debt markets. Member-country fiscal authorities lack commitment to repay their debt and choose fiscal policy independently. A common monetary authority chooses inflation for the...

In this paper, we estimate government purchase multipliers for Japan, following the approach used previously for a panel of OECD countries (Auerbach and Gorodnichenko, 2013). This approach allows multipliers to vary smoothly according to the state of the economy and uses real-time forecast data...

In this paper, we estimate the cross-country spillover effects of government purchases on output for a large number of OECD countries. Following the methodology in Auerbach and Gorodnichenko (2012a, b), we allow these multipliers to vary smoothly according to the state of the economy and use...

This paper studies the optimal level of discretion in policymaking. We consider a fiscal policy model where the government has time-inconsistent preferences with a present-bias towards public spending. The government chooses a fiscal rule to trade off its desire to commit to not overspend...