New estimates of an aggregate long-term production function for the post-war U.S. economy are reported. The results indicate that this long-term aggregate production function exhibits a slight but statistically significant increasing returns to scale. Since virtually all econometric growth...

The effect of inflation on the capital stock is considered in an overlapping generations framework with a Cash-in-Advance constraint on consumption expenditures. The adjustment mechanism underlying the model is that of a traditional model with the real balance effect on savings.

We investigate the sustainability of Italy’s public finances from 1862 to 2012 adopting a non-linear perspective. Specifically, we employ the smooth transition regression approach to explore the scope for non-linear fiscal adjustments of primary surpluses in response to the accumulation of...

The relationship between fiscal and financial euro area indicators and sovereign yield spreads has changed after the start of the financial crisis. Increased financial volatility has magnified the impact of fiscal conditions as drivers of sovereign risk, has widened the set of macroeconomic...

Countercyclical government spending offers social protection to the vulnerable when economies move into recession. This paper questions the extent to which governments are able to spend countercyclically and the extent to which social expenditures are likely to be countercyclical. An analysis of...

This paper tests the predictions that (i) sub-central government expenditures are procyclical and (ii) sub-central government expenditures are likely to be more procyclical than central government spending. The predictions are based on the importance of ‘voracity effects’ and on the...

Financial conditions indexes are developed for the United States and euro area using a wide range of financial indicators and a dynamic factor model. The financial conditions indexes are shown to be useful for forecasting economic activity and have good revision properties. Variants of the...

Can higher technological capacity help firms to recover quicker from recessions? Analyzing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on firm revenues in several countries, we find that firms headquartered in jurisdictions with better digital infrastructure generated relatively higher revenue during...

Recent literature has reported situations in which discretion dominates timeless perspective in the presence of elements that reduce the slope of the New Keynesian Phillips curve. Considering a model-consistent welfare metric inhibits this mechanism in the standard New Keynesian framework.

Diewert and Fox (2013) proposed decompositions of a Malmquist-type productivity index into explanatory factors, with a focus on extracting technical progress, technical efficiency change and returns to scale components. A major problem with their decompositions is that it may be difficult to...