We use a new panel dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how consumers responded to the 2001 federal income tax rebates. We estimate the monthly response of credit card payments, spending, and debt, exploiting the unique, randomized timing of the rebate disbursement. We find that on average...

This paper studies regional output asymmetries following U.S. federal tax shocks. We estimate a vector autoregressive model for each U.S. state, utilizing the exogenous tax shock series recently proposed by Romer and Romer (2010) and find considerable variations: estimated output multipliers lie...

We empirically investigate whether the relationship between interest rates and public deficits/debt may be nonlinear for the U.S. Using threshold estimation, we find evidence of level-dependent effects on interest rates, implying a significant effect of projected deficits and debt in the U.S....

How does private consumption react to an exogenous increase in government expenditure? Standard structural vector autoregressions (SVARs) usually report a positive GDP as well as consumption response, while event studies report a negative consumption response. We investigate in a SVAR whether...

We propose a method for indentifying discretionary fiscal policy with real time data. The starting point is the observation that automatic stabilizers should depend on true GDP, while discretionary fiscal policy depends on the information that policy makers have in real time. We approximate the...

This paper computes the optimal progressivity of the income tax code in a dynamic general equilibrium model with household heterogeneity in which uninsurable labor productivity risk gives rise to a nontrivial income and wealth distribution. A progressive tax system serves as a partial substitute...

We use a new panel dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how consumer responded to the 2001 Federal income tax rebates. We estimate the monthly response of credit card payments, spending, and debt, exploiting the unique, randomized timing of the rebate disbursement. We find that, on...

The aim of this paper is to study the optimal duration of unemployment benefit entitlement duration across the business cycle. We wonder if the entitlement duration should be prolonged in bad and shortened in good times. Because of consumption smoothing, such a countercyclical policy can be...

Renewed interest in fiscal policy has increased the use of quantitative models to evaluate policy. Because of modeling uncertainty, it is essential that policy evaluations be robust to alternative assumptions. We find that models currently being used in practice to evaluate fiscal policy...

We quantify the fiscal multipliers in response to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. We extend the benchmark Smets-Wouters (Smets and Wouters, 2007) New Keynesian model, allowing for credit-constrained households, the zero lower bound, government capital and distortionary...