The empirical effectiveness of economic policies that operate theoretically through similar channels differs substantially. We document this fact by comparing an easy-to-grasp expectations-based policy, unconventional fiscal policy, with a policy whose implications are harder to understand by...

Intertemporal substitution is at the heart of modern macroeconomics and finance as well as economic policymaking, but a large fraction of a representative population of men – those below the top of the distribution by cognitive abilities (IQ) – do not change their consumption propensities...

We document that a large fraction of a representative population of men—those below the top of the distribution by cognitive abilities (IQ)—barely reacts to measures of monetary and fiscal policy that aim at influencing their leverage and durable spending decisions. To the contrary, high-IQ...

Binding lower bounds on interest rates and large government deficits limit the scope of fiscal and monetary policies to stimulate households' spending through financial intermediaries and firms. Policymakers have thus been implementing unconventional policies that aim to increase households'...

Intertemporal substitution is at the heart of modern macroeconomics and finance as well as economic policymaking, but a large fraction of a representative population of men - those below the top of the distribution by cognitive abilities (IQ) - do not change their consumption propensities with...

The empirical effectiveness of economic policies that operate theoretically through similar channels differs substantially. We document this fact by comparing an easy-to-grasp expectations-based policy, unconventional fiscal policy, with a policy whose implications are harder to understand by...

Unconventional fiscal policies incentivize households to accelerate consumption by generating future consumer price ination, and offer an alternative to unconventional monetary policy (Correia et al. (2013)). We use a natural experiment to study the causal effect of unconventional fiscal...

This paper empirically quantifies the importance of fiscal policy in shaping the monetary policy transmission mechanism and derives implications for monetary-fiscal interactions. First, we document that a contractionary monetary policy shock, besides lowering output and prices, leads to a...