US federal transfers to individuals are large, countercyclical, vary geographically, and are often credited for helping stabilize regional economies. This paper estimates the short-run effects of these transfers using plausibly exogenous regional variation in temporary stimulus packages and...

We analyze unconditional within-country convergence from 1991 to 2009 in 21 European countries. Unlike most previous studies we focus on the heterogeneity of convergence. We find that convergence processes in currency unions are extremely heterogenous, highly discontinuous and strongly...