This note explores the sensitivity of the short-run savings effects of government deficits to assumptions about household planning horizons. Using a lifecycle simulation model, we show that even though deficit policies shift sizable tax burdens to future generations, individuals live long enough...

This paper examines the potential influence of changing volatility in stock market prices on the level of stock market prices. It demonstrates that volatility is only weakly serially correlated, implying that shocks to volatility do not persist. These shocks can therefore have only a small...

This paper examines the recent United States experience with sustained budget deficits and concludes that the events of the last five years cast significant doubt on the proposition that the timing of taxes does not affect national savings. Rather than raising private saving, the recent deficits...

This note shows that contrary to widespread belief there is little evidence that the business cycle is asymmetric. Using American data for the pre- and post-war periods and data on five other major OECD nations for the post-war period, we are unable to support the hypothesis that contractions...

This paper estimates the fraction of the variance in aggregate stock returns that can be attributed to various kinds of news. First, we consider macroeconomic news and show that it is difficult to explain more than one third of the return variance from this source. Second, to explore the...

This paper develops a procedure for adjusting the Current Population Survey gross changes data for the effects of reporting errors. The corrected data suggest that the labor market is much less dynamic than has frequently been suggested. Conventional measures sy understate the duration of...

Using data from the United Nations Comparison Project and the Penn World Table, we find that machinery and equipment investment has a strong association with growth: over l9&)?l95 each percent of GDP invested in equipment is associated with an increase in GDP growth of 1/3 a percentage point per...

Analyses of the role of rational speculators in financial markets usually presume that such investors dampen price fluctuations by trading against liquidity or noise traders. This conclusion does not necessarily hold when noise traders follow positive-feedback investment strategies buy when...

This paper uses Taylor's model of overlapping contracts to show that increased wage and price flexibility can easily be destabilizing. This result arises because of the Mundell effect. While lower prices increase output, the expectation of falling prices decreases output. Simulations based on...

Taxes on corporate distributions have traditionally been regarded as a "double tax" on corporate income. This view implies that while the total effective tax rate on corporate source income affects real economic decisions, the distribution of this tax burden between the shareholders and the...