This paper presents a data set that improves the measurement of educational attainment for a broad group of countries. We extend our previous estimates of educational attainment for the population over age 15 and over age 25 up to 1995 and provide projections for 2000. We discuss the estimation...

Our panel data set on educational attainment has been updated for 146 countries from 1950 to 2010. The data are disaggregated by sex and by 5-year age intervals. We have improved the accuracy of estimation by using information from consistent census data, disaggregated by age group, along with...

For U.S. annual data that include WWII, the estimated multiplier for temporary defense spending is 0.4-0.5 contemporaneously and 0.6-0.7 over two years. If the change in defense spending is "permanent" (gauged by Ramey's defense-news variable), the multipliers are higher by 0.1-0.2. The...

Optimal debt management can be thought of in three stages. First, if taxes are lump sum and the other conditions for Ricardian equivalence hold, then the division of government financing between debt and taxes is irrelevant, and the whole level of public debt is indeterminate from an optimal-tax...

This note comments on two central issues for fiscal policy design in the UK, highlighted in the recent Code for Fiscal Stability' proposed by the new Labour government. The first concerns the merits of the so-called golden rule of public sector investment' -- the proposition that, over the...

This paper considers the effects of fiscal and financial policy on economic growth in open and closed economies, when human capital formation by young households is constrained by the illiquidity of human wealth. Both endogenous and exogenous growth versions of the basic OLG model are analyzed....

After an absence of almost half a century, the spectre of deflation is once again haunting the corridors of central banks and finance ministries in the industrial world. While preventing or combating deflation poses some unique difficulties not present in preventing or combating inflation,...

In a dynamic optimising model with costly tax collection, a tax cut by one nation creates positive externalities for the rest of the world if initial public debt stocks are positive. By reducing tax collection costs, current tax cuts boost the resources available for current private consumption,...

Are generational accounts informative about the effect of the budget on the intergenerational distribution of resources and (when augmented with generation-specific propensities to consume out of life-time resources) on aggregate consumption and saving? The paper makes three points. First, the...