The recent sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone was characterized by a monetary policy, which has been constrained by the zero lower bound (ZLB) on nominal interest rates, and several countries, which faced high risk spreads on their sovereign bonds. How is the government spending multiplier...

One important feature of tax reforms, in particular corporate tax reforms, is the uncertainty surrounding them. Are they going to be permanent or are they likely to be withdrawn by the subsequent government? The expected duration of the reform is important because it affects households' economic...

Inflation and earnings growth can push some tax payers into higher brackets in the absence of inflation-indexed schedules. Moreover, inflation may affect the composition of individuals' income sources. As a result, depending on the relative tax burden of labor and capital, inflation may decrease...

We study the sustainability of public debt in a closed production economy where a benevolent government chooses fiscal policies, including haircuts on its outstanding debt, in a discretionary manner. Government bonds are held by domestic agents to smooth consumption over time and because they...

In this paper, we empirically document a link between tax changes and financial market conditions. Using the Romer and Romer (2010) narrative record of exogenous federal tax liability changes for the US, we show that an increase in taxes leads to higher risk premia for corporate bonds issued by...

After 2008, the Southern European economies suffered a strong and persistent increase in unemployment. Rising government bond spreads necessitated the implementation of austerity policies. Austerity however, may increase unemployment. If workers lose human capital during unemployment spells, the...

In this paper, we assess the impact of major German structural reforms from 1999 to 2008 on key macroeconomic variables within a two-country monetary union DSGE model. By many, these reforms, especially the Hartz reforms on the labor market, are considered to be the root of thereafter observed...

We use quantile regression methods to estimate the effects of government spending shocks on output and unemployment rates. This allows to uncover nonlinear effects of fiscal policy by letting the parameters of either vector autoregressive models or local projection regressions vary across the...

The paper investigates the effects of temporary consumption tax cuts using firm-level data. As part of its countercyclical measures implemented during the recent global economic crisis, Tur-key temporarily lowered consumption taxes on selected durables. Our empirical strategy ex-ploits variation...