Previous studies of the U.S. Great Depression find that increased taxation contributed little to either the dramatic downturn or the slow recovery. These studies include only one type of capital taxation: a business profits tax. The contribution is much greater when the analysis includes other...

During the 1990s, market hours in the United States rose dramatically. The rise in hours occurred as gross domestic product (GDP) per hour was declining relative to its historical trend, an occurrence that makes this boom unique, at least for the postwar U.S. economy. We find that expensed plus...

We estimate a model in which fiscal and monetary policy behavior arise from the optimizing behavior of distinct policy authorities, with potentially different welfare functions. Optimal time-consistent policy behavior fits U.S. time series at least as well as rules-based behavior. American...

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models that include policy rules for government spending, lump-sum transfers, and distortionary taxation on labor and capital income and on consumption expenditures are fit to U.S. data under a variety of specifications of fiscal policy rules. We obtain...

This study demonstrates that the U.S. equity premium has declined significantly during the last three decades. The study calculates the equity premium using a variation of a formula in the classic Gordon stock valuation model. The calculation includes the bond yield, the stock dividend yield,...

In this paper, we first provide evidence that existing measures of business incomes and valuations based on widely-used surveys such as the Survey of Consumer Finances are mismeasured. We then develop a theory disciplined by U.S. national accounts and business census data to measure net incomes...

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimates the return on investments of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational companies over the period 1982--2006 averaged 9.4 percent annually after taxes; U.S. subsidiaries of foreign multinationals averaged only 3.2 percent. Two factors distort...

The basic neoclassical growth model accounts well for the postwar cyclical behavior of the U.S. economy prior to the 1990s, provided that variations in population growth, depreciation rates, total factor productivity, and taxes are incorporated. For the 1990s, the model predicts a depressed...