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...

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, a thorough presentation of the state of the art of the New Keynesian Macroeconomic model is provided. A discussion of its empirical caveats follows and some recent extensions of the standard model are evaluated in more detail. Second, a key...

This paper tests one specific monetary transmission mechanism through households: portfolio rebalancing. We use a unique panel dataset of household's credit and debit card spending, ATM withdrawals, financial investments into risky assets such as mutual funds and equities, as well as bank...

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 develop an experimental production economy to study the general equilibrium and welfare effects of speculation and stabilization policies. Participants playing the role of household-investors interact in labor, output, and, in some treatments, asset markets. Without the ability to trade...

Many consumers below the top of the distribution of a representative population by cognitive abilities barely react to monetary and fiscal policies that aim to stimulate consumption and borrowing, even when they are financially unconstrained and despite substantial debt capacity. Differences in...

Communication targeting households and firms has become a stand-alone policy tool of many central banks. But which forms of communication, if any, can reach ordinary people and manage their economic expectations effectively? In a large-scale randomized control trial, we show that communication...

Many consumers below the top of the distribution of a representative population by cognitive abilities barely react to monetary and fiscal policies that aim to stimulate consumption and borrowing, even when they are financially unconstrained and despite substantial debt capacity. Differences in...

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...

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'...