We use a new panel dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how consumer responded to the 2001 Federal income tax rebates. We estimate the monthly response of credit card payments, spending, and debt, exploiting the unique, randomized timing of the rebate disbursement. We find that, on...

This paper studies optimal fiscal policy, in the form of taxation and the allocation of tax revenues between infrastructure and environmental investment, in a general-equilibrium growth model with endogenous subjective discounting. A green spending reform, defined as a reallocation of government...

We study the impact of capital and labor taxation in an economy where couples bargain over the intrahousehold allocation. We present a life cycle model with heterogeneous individuals and incomplete nancial markets. Drawing from the literature of the collective framework of household behavior, we...

Although theoretical models of household behavior often emphasize fiscal foresight, most empirical studies neglect the role of news, thereby potentially underestimating the total effect of tax changes. Using novel high-frequency bond data, I develop a model of the term structure of municipal...

The theoretical literature on generational risk assumes that this risk is large and that the government can effectively share it. To assess these assumptions, this paper simulates a realistically calibrated 80-period overlapping generations life-cycle model with aggregate productivity shocks....

The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

Private pension provision faces the challenging task of providing stable income streams during retirement. The challenge has increased markedly in the last decades due to volatile financial markets, falling interest rates and the withdrawal of employers and external insurers as risk bearers of...

Under the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, most U.S. taxpayers received a tax rebate between July and September, 2001. The week in which the rebate was mailed was based on the second-to-last digit of the taxpayer's Social Security number, a digit that is effectively...

Only one-fifth of respondents to a rider on the University of Michigan Survey Research Center's Monthly Survey said that the 2008 tax rebates would lead them to mostly increase spending. Almost half said the rebate would mostly lead them to pay off debt, while about a third saying it would lead...

The relationship between government and household consumption remains to be one of the contentious issues in both theories and empirics, though its’ immense importance in fiscal policy formulation. Like theories, the empirical studies regarding the relationship between government and household...