The projected path of the U.S. national debt is the major challenge facing American economic policy. Without changes in tax and spending rules, the national debt will rise from 62 percent of GDP now to more than 100 percent of GDP by the end of the decade and nearly twice that level within 25...

Changes in fiscal policy typically entail two kinds of lags: the legislative lag--between when legislation is proposed and when it is signed into law--and the implementation lag--from when a new fiscal law is enacted and when it takes effect. These lags imply that substantial time evolves...

In this lecture, I argue that there are remarkable parallels between how monetary and fiscal policies operate on the macro economy and that these parallels are sufficient to lead us to think about transforming fiscal policy and fiscal institutions as many countries have transformed monetary...

During the last two decades, many Latin American countries engaged in disinflation programs based on both exchange rate management and fiscal reforms. However, in most instances, part of the fiscal reform was delayed or not implemented completely, so the fiscal deficit increased and the program...

In this paper we study the effects of school finance reforms on the distribution of school spending across richer and poorer districts, and the effects of spending equalization on the distribution of student outcomes across children from different family backgrounds. We use school district data...

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...

Past government spending in Japan is currently imposing a significant fiscal burden that is reflected in a net debt to output ratio near 150 percent. In addition, the aging of Japanese society implies that public expenditures and transfers payments relative to output are projected to continue to...

One possible explanation for the difficulty in controlling the budget is that a major component of spending --tax expenditures--receives privileged status. It is treated as tax cuts rather than spending. This paper explores the implications of that classification and illustrates how it can lead...

Cartels participating in procurement auctions frequently use bid rotation or prioritize incumbents to allocate contracts. However, establishing a link between observed allocation patterns and firm conduct has been difficult: there are cost-based competitive explanations for such patterns. We...

Living wage laws, which were introduced in the mid-1990s and have expanded rapidly since then, are typically touted as anti-poverty measures. Yet they frequently restrict coverage to employers with city contracts, and in such cases apply to a small fraction of workers. This apparent...