We analyze the US public sector balance sheet and project it forward under the assumption that current policies remain in place. We first document the history of the balance sheet and its components since World War II, with a detailed account of its evolution during and after the global...

Introduction: war, money, and American history -- A more effectual mode of administration: the constitution and the origins of American public finance -- The soul of government: creating an American fiscal regime -- So immense a power in the affairs of war: the restoration of public credit --...

"George Will nailed it when he said we are sleepwalking into a debt crisis. A Fiscal Cliff: New Perspectives on the U.S. Debt Crisis aims to be a key source of the ideas that will be considered once the already-declared crisis is taken seriously. The unsustainable, and still rapidly growing,...

We develop a method for identifying and quantifying the fiscal channels that help finance government spending shocks. We define fiscal shocks as surprises in defense spending and show that they are more precisely identified when defense stock data are used in addition to aggregate macroeconomic...