This paper explores a new approach to identifying government spending shocks which avoids many of the shortcomings of existing approaches. The new approach is to identify government spending shocks with statistical innovations to the accumulated excess returns of large US military contractors....

Using data on U.S. and Japanese government debt, we calibrate a version of Weil's (1989) model and study the international and intergenerational consequences of recent fiscal policy. Assuming debt/GDP ratios stabilize at current levels, the model implies: (1) the world real interest rate rises...

This paper examines how the scale and composition of public debt can affect economies that implement a combination of “passive” monetary policy and “active” fiscal policy. This policy configuration is argued to be of both historical and contemporary interest in the cases of the U.S. and...

Each year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) publishes its Budget and Economic Outlook. The CBO’s deficit projections for the current fiscal year (FY) and the next 10 FYs are widely followed because they provide an assessment of the medium-term budget outlook based on current law and a...

As the recent recession unfolded, policymakers in the U.S. and abroad employed both monetary and fiscal stabilization tools to help mitigate the downturn. One of the tools that can be used by fiscal policymakers is to actively purchase more goods and services: the idea being that the...

Remarks at Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business, Bronx, New York.