In 1937, in the midst of the US recovery from the Great Depression, President Roosevelt implemented spending cuts in pursuit of a balanced budget. Subsequently, the unemployment rate jumped nearly 6 percentage points over the next year and the US economy re-entered a major recession. In the...

This paper examines the evidence on the impact of stimulus and fiscal consolidation in the context of a severe economic slump like the Great Recession. The first part reviews some of the major works on this topic in the last decade. It notes that the research clearly points in the direction of...

Real wages in the United States have continued to stagnate in the years since the end of the Great Recession. This paper attributes this stagnation directly to the prolonged period of high unemployment. It notes research showing that the only period of sustained wage growth for most of the...