A growing literature relies on natural experiments to establish causal effects in macroeconomics. In diverse applications, natural experiments have been used to verify underlying assumptions of conventional models, quantify specific model parameters, and identify mechanisms that have major...

The study was conducted to assess the impact of macro factors on economic growth in emerging and growth-leading economies (EAGLEs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study applied a Bayesian simulation method, and the empirical results exhibited an ambiguous impact of trade openness and the...

On 3 June 2020, the German government announced a EUR 130 billion fiscal stimulus package to stimulate market demand and jumpstart the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2020. The most prominent measure of this package is an unconventional fiscal policy in the...

This short piece discusses the results of simple regression analysis using cross country data to determine the factors that have influenced fluctuations in real output during the covid-19 pandemic period. Focus is on explaining not only output growth from 2020 to the first half of 2021, but also...

The trend of increasing inequality in the distribution of income and wealth in most developed countries has led to calls for corrective tax increases for the rich and wealthy. Such calls are often confronted with the claim that higher taxes on top personal incomes, corporate income and wealth...

Goods and service tax (GST) introduced as a ‘good and simple tax’ on 1 July 2017 by the Modi government is the boldest measure of tax reform so far in India. The major aim of this paper is to evaluate the micro and macro impacts of the goods and services taxes (GST) using a dynamic...

We evaluate the 1968 H3N2 Flu pandemic’s economic cost in a cross-section of 52 countries. Using excess mortality rates as a proxy for the country-specific severity of the pandemic, we find that the average mortality rate (0.0062% per pandemic wave) was associated with declines in consumption...

Recent analyses relate increases in the growth rate of countries to anticipation effects caused by bidding for the Olympic Games, so called news shocks. We argue that these findings should be interpreted cautiously. First, these analyses may suffer from an omitted variable bias because they...