Conventional wisdom teaches that the output response upon a fiscal expansion is higher under fixed than floating exchange rates for a small open economy. We analyse the effects of fiscal expansions using a New Keynesian model and find that this result reverses in times of sovereign default risk....

In standard macroeconomic models, debt sustainability and price level determinacy are achieved when fiscal policy avoids explosive debt and monetary policy controls inflation, irrespective of the relative strengths of each policy stance. We examine how these policy requirements for equilibrium...

The Atkinson-Stiglitz theorem on uniform consumption taxation breaks down if prices are endogenous. This paper investigates the implications for optimal food subsidies in China. To do so, we build a general equilibrium model where low-skilled workers have a comparative advantage in the...

This model of policy evaluation has been developed to identify factors that cause policy outcomes to diverge from the intended results. In this model the explanatory factors may be inherent to the conceptual and institutional framework to which policy makers adhere, or they may be ‘real...

We explore the consequences of different financial frictions on the corporate and banking level for macroeconomic policy responsiveness to major policy measures. We show that both corporate and bank debt overhang greatly reduce the effectiveness of fiscal policy: multipliers turn negative with...

We introduce a new model for time-varying spatial dependence. The model extends the well-known static spatial lag model. All parameters can be estimated conveniently by maximum likelihood. We establish the theoretical properties of the model and show that the maximum likelihood estimator for the...

The multivariate analysis of a panel of economic and financial time series with mixed frequencies is a challenging problem. The standard solution is to analyze the mix of monthly and quarterly time series jointly by means of a multivariate dynamic model with a monthly time index: artificial...

We propose a new Bayesian heteroskedastic Markov-switching structural vector autoregression with data-driven time-varying identification. The model selects alternative exclusion restrictions over time and, as a condition for the search, allows to verify identification through heteroskedasticity...

We consider models where the Ramsey-optimal fiscal policy under Full Commitment (FC) is time-inconsistent and define a new notion of optimal policy, Limited-Time Commitment (LTC). Successive one-period lived governments can commit to future plans over a finite horizon. We provide a sufficient...