"Big G" typically refers to aggregate government spending on a homogeneous good. In this paper, we open up this construct by analyzing the entire universe of procurement contracts of the US government and establish five facts. First, government spending is granular; that is, it is concentrated...

We study the mechanics of transmission of fiscal shocks to labor markets. We characterize a set of robust implications following government consumption, investment and employment shocks in a RBC and a New-Keynesian model and use part of them to identify shocks in the data. In line with the...

I characterize optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a stochastic New Keynesian model when nominal interest rates may occasionally hit the zero lower bound. The benevolent policymaker controls the short-term nominal interest rate and the level of government spending. Under discretionary policy,...

Since the fall of 2008, the amount of outstanding reserves on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet has increased from about 100 billion dollars to more than 1 trillion dollars. There is some concern that the magnitude of outstanding reserves might affect the ability of the Federal Reserve to...

I analyze monetary policy with interest on reserves and a large balance sheet. I show that conventional theories do not determine inflation in this regime, so I base the analysis on the fiscal theory of the price level. I find that monetary policy can peg the nominal rate, and determine expected...