We study cointegrating relationships among fiscal variables and output and use them to introduce a new measure of the government's fiscal position. In the US since World War II, we find that the primary surplus-GDP ratio and the government debt-GDP ratio are nonstationary, which invalidates...

A long-standing puzzle in the fiscal federalism literature is the empirical non-equivalence in government spending from grants and other income. I propose a fully rational model in which violations of fungibility arise from dynamic interactions between politicians and interest groups with the...

We study the role of firms' political influence on the effectiveness of government spending using ARRA as a laboratory. Through an IV approach, we show that a 10 percentage points increase in the share of politically connected spending lowers the job creation effect of stimulus by 33 percent at...

Based on a sample of 56 countries, we find that while fiscal policy in the G-7 countries appears to be broadly consistent with Barro's tax smoothing proposition, in developing countries government spending and taxes are highly procyclical (i.e., government spending rises and taxes fall during...

This paper characterizes the dynamic effects of shocks in government spending and taxes on economic activity in the United States in the post-war period. It does so by using a mixed structural VAR/event study approach. Identification is achieved by using institutional information about the tax...

We assess the role that nontradable goods play as a determinant of fiscal spending multipliers, making use of a two-sector model. While fiscal multipliers increase with the share of nontradable goods, an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between multiplier size and the import share....

I use new data on central and general governments for 23 OECD countries over the period 1960-2015 (unbalanced panel) to examine fiscal performance under minority governments. The results do not suggest that minority governments had higher fiscal deficits and public expenditure than majority...

This paper examines the association between episodes of large fiscal impulses (expansions and adjustments) and sustainable development indicators (prosperity, resilience, and inclusivity). We provide country studies of Chile, Poland, South Africa, and Thailand, examining the components of...

Recent proposals to expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC) are at the center of current policy discussions in the United States. We study the fiscal cost of three such proposals that would expand refundability of the credit to low-income children, increase the maximum credit amount, and/or eliminate...