This paper presents new tests of the permanent income hypothesis and other widely used models of household behavior using data from the labor market. We estimate the "excess sensitivity" of job search behavior to cash-on-hand using sharp discontinuities in eligibility for severance pay and...

This paper presents new empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that positive money supply shocks drive short-term interest rates down. We then present a quantitative, general equilibrium model which is consistent with the hypothesis. The two key features of our model are that (i) money...

Conventional wisdom holds that unanticipated expansionary monetary policy shocks cause transient but persistent decreases in real and nominal interest rates. However a number of econometric studies argue that the evidence favors the opposite view, namely that these shocks actually raise, rather...

In this paper we study the effects of school finance reforms on the distribution of school spending across richer and poorer districts, and the effects of spending equalization on the distribution of student outcomes across children from different family backgrounds. We use school district data...

This paper analyzes the quality of VAR-based procedures for estimating the response of the economy to a shock. We focus on two key issues. First, do VAR-based confidence intervals accurately reflect the actual degree of sampling uncertainty associated with impulse response functions? Second,...

This paper develops the quantitative implications of optimal fiscal policy in a business cycle model. In a stationary equilibrium the ex ante tax rate on capital income is approximately zero. There is an equivalence class of ex post capital income tax rates and bond policies that support a given...

We use 1980 and 1990 Census data for 119 larger Metropolitan Statistical Areas to examine the effect of skill-group specific immigrant inflows on the location decisions of natives in the same skill group, and on the overall distribution of human capital. To control for unobserved skill-group...