We study the effects of debt-financed fiscal transfers in a general equilibrium, heterogeneous-agent model of the world economy. In the long run, increases in government debt anywhere raise the world interest rate and increase private wealth everywhere. In the short run, a country with a...

The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) is a promise to obtain price level determinacy even if the nominal interest rate is constant. The idea is that a unique current price level ensures that the present value government budget constraint holds. I establish that this idea hinges on the...

In the past decade, a new paradigm for fiscal and monetary policy analysis has emerged, combining the canonical macro model of income and wealth inequality with the New Keynesian model. These Heterogeneous-Agent New Keynesian ("HANK") models feature new transmission channels and allow for the...

We show that the largest increase in unemployment benefits in U.S. history had large spending impacts and small job-finding impacts. This finding has three implications. First, increased benefits were important for explaining aggregate spending dynamics--but not employment dynamics--during the...

Recent work demonstrates that dynastic assumptions guarantee the irrelevance of all redistributional polices, distortionary taxes, and prices--the neutrality of fiscal policy (Ricardian equivalence) is only the "tip of the iceberg." In this paper, we investigate the possibility of reinstating...