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...

This paper proposes a moment-matching method for approximating vector autoregressions by finite-state Markov chains. The Markov chain is constructed by targeting the conditional moments of the underlying continuous process. The proposed method is more robust to the number of discrete values and...

This paper investigates the effects of government spending on key macroeconomic variables in Germany. It contributes to the ongoing debate on how to properly identify exogenous fiscal shocks in the data and on whether or not the government should intervene in the business cycle. Following Ramey...

Austerity measures are frequently enacted when the sustainability of public finances is in doubt. Such doubts are reflected in high sovereign yield spreads and put further strain on government finances. Is austerity successful in restoring market confidence, bringing about a reduction in yield...

Does the state of the business cycle matter for the effects of fiscal policy shocks on GDP? This study analyses quarterly German data from 1976 to 2009 in a threshold SVAR, expanding the SVAR approach by Blanchard and Perotti (2002). In a linear benchmark SVAR, the analysis finds that hiking...

We study the empirical effects of fiscal policy in Denmark since the adoption of a fixed exchange rate policy in 1982. We demonstrate that fiscal stimulus has a rather large impact on economic activity in the very short run, with a government spending multiplier of 1.3 on impact in our preferred...

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...

This paper shows that government debt creates a so far neglected wealth effect that has sizable effects on business cycle fluctuations. We present a new channel through which governments can influence cyclical fluctuations generated by any type of shock and contribute to macroeconomic stability....

We explore a century-long dataset with a Markov-switching structural VAR to estimate state-dependent government spending multipliers. We show that the multiplier values are statistically larger during recessions than during expansions. However, the multipliers are always smaller than 1. Our...

Using a large Bayesian VAR, we approximate the flow of information received by economic agents to investigate the effects of changes to government purchases. We document robust evidence that informational insufficiency in conventional models explains inconsistent results across samples and...