A major change of the property tax system in 2011 generated significant variation in the amount of housing taxes paid by Italian households. Using new questions added to the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), we exploit this variation to provide an unprecedented analysis of the...

As of August 2015, Greece's loan repayments due to external creditors through 2057 summed to €319.5 billion, requiring an average debt payment on a flow basis of 4.1 percent of 2014 Greek GDP. This paper examines the economic impact of increases in distortionary taxes on consumption, capital...

In earlier work we documented two episodes in which a sharp fiscal consolidation was associated with a very large expansions in private domestic demand. In this paper we draw on further evidence to investigate if and when fiscal policy changes can have such non-Keynesian effects. In the first...