This research reviews the effects of fiscal expenditures on economic output in a non-linear fashion for the Barbados economy. Using the Markov-Switching methodology, fiscal expenditure multipliers are estimated for each stage of the business cycle. The data indicates that a three-regime model is...

This paper studies the optimal taxation between luxury and necessity goods. We set up a three-production-sector neoclassical growth model with inelastic labor supply, and analyze the tax incidence. We find that the two consumption taxes are neutral to economic growth and that the welfare...

We propose an indicator of the degree of conservativeness of an independent central bank and we derive its optimal social value. We show that from a normative perspective, one can either design a central bank that cares about public spending or that it does not -but in the latter case the...

Monetary policy design in currency unions faces more challenging scenarios like the presence of asymmetric shocks and the higher probability of time inconsistency. An evaluation of the union welfare under a monetary rule and under discretion in these circumstances is carried out. Assuming that...

This paper shows that there is the weak “Globally” Ricardian rules that sustains the sustainability of the government debt in the sense that it binds intertemporal government budget constraint. And we compare our result with the former paper about testing the government debt sustainability....

The potential consequences of the development of domestic debt markets in Low-Income Countries (LICs) are extremely relevant for policy-makers and international financial institutions, especially in light of a scaling-up of public investment in infrastructures. This paper introduces a new...

This paper sets up an endogenous growth model to examine the effects of an expansion of defense spending share on inflation, economic growth and welfare. It is found that: (i) an increase of defense spending share will lower the inflation rate and stimulate the economic growth. (ii) from the...

This paper estimates the short run effect of the Car Allowance Rebate System (or “Cash for Clunkers†on light vehicle sales within the United States. Using a reduced form demand model of automobiles, I find that the program led to increased sales in July and August, 2009 of between...

In this paper we examine the effects of the ratio of internal to external public debt on a country's economic growth. These effects are examined through a competitive, decentralized model of endogenous economic growth, which relies on public investments. Our findings show that as the...

In this paper, we obtain the closed form of fiscal multipliers in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with liquidity-constrained households. The closed form indicates that the first-period multiplier depends monotonically on the fraction of liquidity-constrained households over all...