This paper investigates whether the socioeconomic status of the head of government helps explain fiscal performance. Applying sociological research that attributes differences in people’s ways of thinking and acting to their relative standing within society, we test whether the social status...

Recent work on financial frictions in New Keynesian models suggest that there is a sizable spread between the risk-less interest rate and the borrowing rate. We analyze the optimal policy mix of monetary and fiscal authorities in a currency union with a country-specific credit spread by...