This paper examines three sources of the fluctuations in real interest rates during the past three decades: changes in budget deficits, changes in tax rules, and changes in monetary policy. The evidence indicates that budget deficits and monetary policy have had a strong influence on the level...

This study examines the potential effects on personal savings of alternative types of tax rules. The analysis makes use of two extensive samples of information on individual savings and financial income: the 1972 Consumer Expenditure Survey and a stratified random sample of 26,000 individual tax...

The tax reforms of the 1980s were the most substantial tax changes since the dramatic expansion of personal taxation during World War II. This paper. which was written as part of the NBER project on American economic policy in the 1980s. examines the nature of these changes and discusses the...

Although the tax reforms of the 1980s substantially lowered the excess burden caused by high marginal tax rates, there were also significant adverse effects on incentives to save and to invest in business plant and equipment. Effective tax rates on. real capital gains and real net interest...

The first two years of the economic expansion that began in 1983 were unusually strong and were accompanied by better inflation performance than would have been expected on the basis of experience in past recoveries. Our evidence contradicts the popular view that the recovery was the result of a...