Politicians, scientists and journalists have aired vastly different assessments of the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from rather optimistic to very pessimistic ones. In this paper we investigate how narratives conveying different assessments of the pandemic impact economic behavior. In a controlled...

We construct a dynamic model of a small open economy to analyze the effects of large energy subsidies. The model includes domestic energy production and consumption, trade in energy at world market prices, as well as private and public sector production. The model is calibrated to Egypt and used...

Using a dataset of 171 countries, I show that macroprudential policy (MaPP) exacerbates wealth inequality. I find that, after the adoption of MaPP, wealth concentration as measured by the Gini index increases by about 4.4 percentage points relative to a synthetic control country without MaPP....

This paper assesses the impact of macroprudential policy (MaPP) on aggregate demand in the EU between 2000-2019. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that MaPP reduces household consumption and increases firm investment. These effects are relatively mild in the short run but...

This paper investigates the real effects of macroprudential policy (MaPP) using individual data from 122 countries. The empirical analysis shows that MaPP increases savings and decreases borrowing. These effects are then disaggregated by policy instrument, interest rate and country income level....

We use responses to survey questions in the 2010 Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth that ask consumers how much of an unexpected transitory income change they would consume. We find that the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is 48 percent on average, and that there is substantial...

Is the observed large increase in consumer indebtedness since the 1980s beneficial for U.S. consumers? This paper quantitatively studies the macroeconomic and welfare implications of relaxing borrowing constraints when consumers exhibit a hyperbolic discounting preference. The model can capture...

This paper presents new survey evidence on workers' response to the 2011 payroll tax cuts. While workers intended to spend 10 to 18 percent of their tax-cut income, they reported actually spending 28 to 43 percent of the funds. This is higher than estimates from studies of recent tax cuts, and...

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...