After the Global Financial Crisis a controversial rush to fiscal austerity followed in many countries. Yet research on the effects of austerity on macroeconomic aggregates was and still is unsettled, mired by the difficulty of identifying multipliers from observational data. This paper...

We study fiscal policy in Denmark in the period 2004-2012 and compare the actual policy to counterfactual, rule-based alternatives. Given Denmark's fixed exchange rate towards the euro, it is the job of fiscal policymakers to stabilise fluctuations in output and inflation. However, we find that...

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'...

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 with...

Macroeconomic models that omit the shadow economy systematically mis-forecast and mis-measure the effect of fiscal –in particular tax– policy on economic activity and tax revenue. We add an informal sector to the Bank of Greece DSGE model and use the actual package of fiscal consolidation...

This paper is a thoroughly revised and extended version of an article firstly published in the anthology "Moderne Wirtschaftsgeschichte" (München: Oldenbourg) in 1996. This book is an introduction to modern economic history for historians and economists. Accordingly this paper has to two...

In this paper, we analyze the International Great Depression in the US and Western Europe using the business cycle accounting method a la Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (CKM 2007). We extend the business cycle accounting model by incorporating endogenous factor utilization which turns out to be an...

We examine Italian inflation rates and the Phillips curve with a very long-run perspective, one that covers the entire existence of the Italian lira from political unification (1861) to the entry of Italy in the European Monetary Union (end of 1998). We first study the volatility, persistence...

Using a database of up to 62 variables for 196 countries over 57 years, a hyperinflation cycle has been characterized to propose a broader setting of stylized facts. Beyond the usual facts, the findings in this paper contribute to the literature of modern hyperinflations in that these cycles...