This paper evaluates the extent to which a DSGE model can account for the impact of tax policy shocks. We estimate the response of macroeconomic aggregates to anticipated and unanticipated tax shocks in the U.S. and find that unanticipated tax cuts have persistent expansionary effects on output,...

This paper explores the implications of economic and political inequality for the comovement of government purchases with macroeconomic fluctuations. We set up and compute a heterogeneous-agent neoclassical growth model, where households value government purchases which are financed by income...

A political-economic theory of fiscal policy is presented in which tax policy preferences are derived from a conflict of interest between individuals of different ages. Policy formation is fully rational in that an individual's beliefs regarding future policies are consistent with...

This paper analyzes the effects of intergenerational conflict on capital and labor income tax rates, transfers, and government spending in a model of multidimensional policy choice. The different nature of tax liabilities for the young and the old can explain why the old receive large gross...

In DSGE models, fiscal policy is typically described by simple rules in which tax rates respond to the level of output. We show that there is only weak empirical evidence in favor of such specifications in U.S. data. Instead, the cyclical movements of labor and capital income tax rates are...

Treating public policies as computable dynamic general equilibrium model specification errors offers computational and conceptional advantages for comparing models with data. By calculating the set of policies that rationalize observed behavior, the substantive economic question then becomes...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) significantly altered how business income is taxed in the US. This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the distributional and macroeconomic effects of the TCJA, both in the short run and in the long run, using a life-cycle model with occupational choice...

In this paper, I extend the Barro-Becker model of endogenous fertility to incorporate specific fiscal policies and use it to study the effects of the fiscal policy changes following WWII on fertility in the United States. The US government went through large changes in fiscal policy after the...

This paper develops a monetary model with taxes to account for the time-varying effects of energy shocks on output and hours worked in post-World War II U.S. data. In our model, the real effects of an energy shock are amplified when the monetary authority responds to that shock by changing its...

This paper studies the effects of asymmetries in re-election probabilities across parties on public policy and their subsequent propagation to the economy. The struggle between groups that disagree on targeted public spending (e.g., pork) results in governments being endogenously short-sighted:...