This paper analyzes the effectiveness of the tax and transfer systems in the European Union and the US to act as an automatic stabilizer in the current economic crisis. We find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38 per cent of a proportional income shock in the EU, compared to 32 per cent in the...

This paper investigates the relationship between the magnitude of automatic stabilizers in the tax and transfer systems of 19 EU countries and the US, and discretionary fiscal stimulus packages passed by these countries during the recent economic crisis. In particular, we ask whether countries...

This paper provides evidence on the effect of fiscal stimulus on economic activity in countries with different degrees of institutional quality. The identification strategy makes use of data on military expenditure to instrument government consumption using local lineal projections as presented...

We estimate state-dependent government spending multipliers for the United States. We use a Factor-Augmented Interacted Vector Autoregression (FAIVAR) model. This allows us to capture the time-varying monetary policy characteristics including the recent zero interest rate lower bound (ZLB)...

This paper contributes to the debate on fiscal multipliers, in the context of a structural model. I estimate a micro-founded dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, that features a rich fiscal policy block and a transmission mechanism for government spending shocks, using Bayesian...

Fiscal policy has become quite controversial in the post-Keynesian era, the debate over the Obama stimulus package being a contentious recent example. Some pundits go so far as to take the position that macroeconomic theory has failed to meaningfully progress in terms of providing useful...

In the present work we investigate how the state of credit markets non-linearly affects the impact of fiscal policies. We estimate a Threshold Vector Autoregression (TVAR) model on U.S quarterly data for the period 1984-2010. We employ the spread between BAA-rated corporate bond yield and...

We investigate whether the macroeconomic effects of government spending shocks vary with the level of uncertainty. Using postwar US data and a Self-Exciting Interacted VAR (SEIVAR) model, we find that fiscal spending has positive output effects in tranquil times but is contractionary during...

We investigate whether the macroeconomic effects of government spending shocks vary with the level of uncertainty. Using postwar US data and a Self-Exciting Interacted VAR (SEIVAR) model, we find that fiscal spending has positive output effects in tranquil times but is contractionary during...

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models that include policy rules for government spending, lump-sum transfers, and distortionary taxation on labor and capital income and on consumption expenditures are fit to U.S. data under a variety of specifications of fiscal policy rules. We obtain...