Did the 2008 rebate fail to stimulate consumer spending? In their influential <i>American Economic Review</i> articles, John Taylor and Martin Feldstein each claim that Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) aggregate time series data show that the 2008 rebate failed. Reexamining the BEA data, we find that...

The authors analyze several reasonable policy options for pay-as-you-go Social Security that might be adopted in response to a temporary demographic bulge. The bulge generation enters the economy, works, retires, andexits the economy. Three of the policies maintain a balanced budget. Under the...

This article constructs a transitional protection rule-an “old-wealth deduction†-for conversion of the income tax to a personal consumption tax and tests it in four stylized life cycle economies (identical, pension, bequest, and spender) by performing numerical simulations. It is...

Did the 2008 rebate fail to stimulate consumer spending? In their recent influential AER articles, John Taylor and Martin Feldstein each claim that BEA aggregate time series data show that the 2008 rebate failed. Re-examining the BEA data, we find that the data instead show there is a high...

Hoffman and Seidman offer a complete assessment of the EITC in which they analyze, evaluate, summarize, and critique the state of the program. The authors find that, overall, the EITC works well, and that it has earned its political popularity. Yet they also uncover several problem areas that...

The authors begin with a detailed assessment then perform empirical analyses to predict the outcomes of changes to the structure of the program.

This article contends that the "new" classical counter-revolution that began in the 1970s has been a false path for macroeconomics. Keynesian economics nicely explained the 1970s stagflation that followed the world oil price hike with a shift up of the supply curve in its AD/AS diagram. Lucas...

This paper shows the importance of the age path (life-cycle timing) of any tax for the accumulation of capital in the economy. Income, consumption, and wage taxes differ in their age paths as well as their incentive effects. This paper studies how the differing age path of each tax affects the...