We assess the role of banks to the transmission of fiscal policy reforms to the economy. We built-up a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents, banks and government. We find that banks mitigate the negative spillover effects to the economy from higher taxes....

Closely following the seminal contribution of Jappelli and Pistaferri (2014) - based on Italian household survey data - we employ data of 22 European countries to assess the role of heterogeneity of the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) for fiscal policy in the Euro area. We document an...

The United States is currently trying to manage a fast-moving public health crisis due to the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19). The economic and financial ramifications of the outbreak are serious. This Working Paper discusses these ramifications and identifies three interrelated but potentially...

This paper assesses the effects of the most recent monetary policy behavior of the Bank of Japan (BOJ) (in particular, zero interest rate policy and negative interest rate policy) and Japanese tax policy on income inequality in this country during the period of 2002Q1 to 2017Q3. The vector error...

From April 2013 until May 2016, Japan's monetary base rose from ¥155 trillion to ¥387 trillion as part of the Bank of Japan's (BOJ) quantitative and qualitative easing (QQE) monetary policy for achieving a price stability target of 2%. Although the main objective of the BOJ's quantitative...

We examine the role of institutional investors in monetary policy transmission to asset markets by exploiting a discontinuous threshold in the tax treatment of municipal bonds. As bonds approach the threshold, mutual funds, the primary institutional traders in the market, dispose of the bonds at...

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,...

This paper studies optimal discretionary monetary and fiscal policy when the lower bound on nominal interest rates is occasionally binding in a model with nominal rigidities and long-term government debt. At the lower bound it is optimal for the government to temporarily reduce debt. This...

We propose a novel framework where forward guidance (FG) is endogenously determined. Our model assumes that a monetary authority solves an optimal policy problem under commitment at the zero-lower bound. FG derives from two sources: 1. from commiting to keep interest rates low at the exit of the...