We build a publicly available platform that tracks economic activity at a granular level in real time using anonymized data from private companies. We report daily statistics on consumer spending, business revenues, employment rates, and other key indicators disaggregated by county, industry,...

We study the effects of the unionization of faculty at Canadian universities from 1970-2022 using an event-study design. Using administrative data which covers the full universe of faculty salaries, we find strong evidence that unionization leads to both average salary gains and compression of...

Central banks across the globe introduced large-scale asset purchase programs to address the unprecedented circumstances experienced during the pandemic. Many of these programs were announced as open-ended to shock-and-awe market participants and restore confidence in financial markets. This...

Observed fiscal policy varies greatly across time and countries. How can we explain this variation across time and countries? This paper surveys the recent literature that has tried to answer this question. We adopt a unified approach in portraying public policy as the equilibrium outcome of an...

We study a fiscal policy model in which the government is present-biased towards public spending. Society chooses a fiscal rule to trade off the benefit of committing the government to not overspend against the benefit of granting it flexibility to react to privately observed shocks to the value...

What are the macroeconomic consequences of the dominant role of the dollar in the international monetary system? Here, we present a calibrated two country model in which exports are invoiced in the key currency, and government bonds denominated in the key currency are held internationally to...

The paper studies the solvency of the Indian public sector and the eventual monetization and inflation implied by stabilization of the debt-GNP ratio without any changes in the primary deficit. The nonstationarity of the discounted public debt suggests that indefinite continuation of the pattern...