The euro area's political contract requires member nations to rely principally on their own resources when confronted with severe economic distress. Since monetary policy is the same for all, national fiscal austerity is the default response to counter national fiscal stress. Moreover, the...

In this paper, we explore the proposition that the optimal capital income tax is zero using an overlapping generations model. We prove that for a large class of preferences, the optimal capital income tax along the transition path and in steady state is non-zero. For a version of the model...

This paper provides evidence on the effect of fiscal stimulus on economic activity in countries with different degrees of institutional quality. The identification strategy makes use of data on military expenditure to instrument government consumption using local lineal projections as presented...

This paper provides a comprehensive early warning system (EWS) that balances the classical signaling approach with the best-realized machine learning (ML) model for predicting fiscal stress episodes. Using accumulated local effects (ALE), we compute a set of thresholds for the most informative...

This paper estimates the impact on the US economy of four types of uncertainty about (i) government spending, (ii) tax changes, (iii) public debt sustainability and (iv) monetary policy. Following a one standard deviation shock, uncertainty about debt sustainability has the largest and most...

This scoping paper outlines credit counselling and debt management structures in the United States and their effectiveness in improving consumers' financial management status. First, various public and private credit counselling systems are explained with a focus on each institution's roles and...