During the Great Recession following the recent financial crisis large fiscal stimuli were implemented to counteract labor market sclerosis. We explore the effectiveness of various fiscal packages in a matching model featuring inefficient unemployment and a rich fiscal sector employing...

Using a panel of 21 OECD countries and 40 years of annual data, we find that countries with similar government budget positions tend to have business cycles that fluctuate more closely. That is, fiscal convergence (in the form of persistently similar ratios of government surplus/deficit to GDP)...