In this paper, we employ the discrete-time duration model to examine whether expansion and contraction phases of government revenue exhibit duration dependence. We hence use an unbalanced panel data of public revenue on 68 developing countries over the period 1980-2009. The analysis also covers...

The short-run macroeconomic effectiveness of fiscal policy depends on the effect of policy on AD and the effect of AD on output. This paper examines how macroeconomic perspectives (Keynesian, Post Keynesian, monetarist, classical, new classical, and new Keynesian) describe the effect of AD on...

We study the determinants of political myopia in a rational model of electoral accountability where the key elements are informational frictions and uncertainty. We build a framework where political ability is ex-ante unknown and policy choices are not perfectly observable. On the one hand,...

This paper investigates the effects of systematic (or rules-based) and non-systematic (exogenous) fiscal policy changes on output growth in Greece, focusing also on the composition of fiscal policy. Exogenous fiscal policy changes are associated with Keynesian responses (with the exception of...

A classic result in dynamic public economics states that there is no welfare rationale for pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pensions in a dynamically-efficient neoclassical economy with exogenous labor supply. Parenthetically, a welfare justification for PAYG pensions exists if the economy is dynamically...

This paper characterizes an intergenerational welfare state with endogenous education and pension choice under general equilibrium-probabilistic voting. We show that politically implementing public education program always increases the future human capital, but this higher future human capital...

Sweden is one of the countries with the largest public fiscal intervention and narrowest income inequality in the world. This article investigates to what extent these two features are interconnected and whether economic growth affects and is affected by this relationship. Empirical results from...

We provide a complete characterization of intergenerational welfare state with education and pension under probabilistic voting where voters internalize the general equilibrium effects materializing in their life-span. We show that as public education is introduced in the economy through the...

A look at the Western debate about West’s problems reveals what the present writer regards in a large measure as an irritating superficiality. Nowhere is it better visible than in the mainstream discussions about the euro zone and its problems, where most debaters glide over the fundamentals...

In this paper we examine how model uncertainty due to the preference for robustness (RB) affects optimal taxation and the evolution of debt in the Barro tax-smoothing model (1979). We first study how the government spending shocks are absorbed in the short run by varying taxes or through debt...