Ramey (2011a) and others argue that increases in government spending associated with wars and military build-ups constitute a good instrument for measuring the macroeconomic effects of fiscal shocks. We argue that this instrument has two important drawbacks: the composition of government...

The literature on estimating macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy requires suitable instruments to identify exogenous and unanticipated spending shocks. So far, the instrument of choice has been military build-ups. This instrument, however, largely limits the analysis to the US as few other...

This paper investigates the relationship between fiscal consolidation, business plans and firm investment. Based on a detailed narrative of tax changes in Germany covering 40 years of fiscal adjustments, we define and exploit the exogenous variation of tax bills to quantify the effect of tax...

We use a two-sector neoclassical open economy model with traded and non-traded goods to investigate both the aggregate and the sectoral e®ects of temporary ¯scal shocks. One central ¯nding is that both sectoral capital intensities and labor supply elasticity matter in determining the response...

We use a two-sector neoclassical open economy model with traded and non-traded goods and endogenous markups to investigate both the aggregate and the sectoral ef- fects of temporary fiscal shocks. One central finding is that both the sectoral capital intensities and endogenous markups matter in...

In this paper, we develop heterogeneous agent models with equilibrium unemployment to study the optimal taxation and labour wedge. We find that the the presence of profits plays an important role in the determination of both optimal tax policy and labour wedge. Judd-Chamley optimal zero capital...

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the influence of the Common European Fiscal Framework (Maastricht Treaty) on the Economic Growth of Greece. Under specific hypotheses, we use the standard neoclassical growth theory model of Ramsey – Cass – Koopmans. For a period of 2000 till 2006,...

Robert Solow has criticized our 2006 Journal of Economic Perspectives essay describing "Modern Macroeconomics in Practice." Solow eloquently voices the commonly heard complaint that too much macroeconomic work today starts with a model with a single type of agent. We argue that modern...

We investigate the macroeconomic effects of government spending shocks in Korea. We compare results obtained with two alternative approaches: the narrative approach and Structural Vector-Autoregressive model (SVAR). We propose a new methodology for identifying exogenous and unexpected fiscal...

Financial crisis brought to the fore the fierce confrontation between Keynes disciples and Friedman disciples, between demand siders and supply siders, between Obama’s policies focused on economic growrh and EU austerity policies focused on deficit and debts reduction. Monetary policy...