This paper develops a political-economic model of fiscal policy one in which" government resources are a common property' out of which interest groups can finance" expenditures on their preferred items. This setup has striking macroeconomic implications. " First, fiscal deficits and debt...

Conventional wisdom holds that unanticipated expansionary monetary policy shocks cause transient but persistent decreases in real and nominal interest rates. However a number of econometric studies argue that the evidence favors the opposite view, namely that these shocks actually raise, rather...

This paper presents new empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that positive money supply shocks drive short-term interest rates down. We then present a quantitative, general equilibrium model which is consistent with the hypothesis. The two key features of our model are that (i) money...