In this paper we survey the historical record for over two centuries on the connection between expansionary fiscal policy and inflation. As a backdrop, we briefly lay out several theoretical approaches to the effects of fiscal deficits on inflation: the earlier Keynesian and monetarist...

In this paper I reflect on my first year as Governor of the Bank of Israel, which I joined in May 2005. I start by describing the current state of the Israeli economy and monetary policy and economic developments during the past year. I then review a series of issues that have arisen during the...

In this paper we examine how target ranges work in the context of a Barro-Gordon (1983) type model, in which the time-inconsistency problem stems from political pressures from the government. We show that target ranges turn out to be an excellent way to cope with the time-inconsistency problem,...

Analysis based on a new measure of financial distress for 24 advanced economies in the postwar period shows substantial variation in the aftermath of financial crises. This paper examines the role that macroeconomic policy plays in explaining this variation. We find that the degree of monetary...

The paper combines insights from the recent research programs on constitutions and economic policy, and on history, institutions and growth. Drawing on cross-sectional as well as panel data, it presents new empirical results showing that the form of democracy (rather than democracy vs....

The paper presents empirical findings regarding the economic policy consequences of constitutional arrangements, in three different dimensions. First, the data are consistent with several theoretical predictions about the consequences of electoral rules and forms of government for fiscal policy...

This paper develops a decision-theoretic approach to policy analysis. We argue that policy evaluation should be conducted on the basis of two factors: the policymaker's preferences, and the conditional distribution of the outcomes of interest given a policy and available information. From this...

We consider a tractable model of heterogeneous production units that features endogenous entry and productivity investment to assess the quantitative impact of policy distortions on aggregate output and establishment size. Relative to the standard factor misallocation framework, policy...

Building on Baker, Bloom and Davis (2016), I construct a monthly index of Global Economic Policy Uncertainty (GEPU) from January 1997. The GEPU Index is a GDP-weighted average of national EPU indices for 16 countries that account for two-thirds of global output. Each national EPU index reflects...

We live in a new world economy characterized by financial globalization and historically low interest rates. This environment is conducive to countries experiencing credit bubbles that have large macroeconomic effects at home and are quickly propagated abroad. In previous work, we built on the...