We quantify all statements by major European politicians reported by Reuters during the August 2011 to December 2011 period and show that political communication significantly affects European stock and bond markets as well as the EURUSD exchange rate. Communication with respect to Italy induces...

How may professionals be made to contribute to legislative processes so that their expertise redounds to the public interest, despite the legislative product being likely to have a negative impact on their clients' wealth? Drawing on a case study of the legislative process which gave birth to...

Using a large Bayesian VAR, we approximate the flow of information received by economic agents to investigate the effects of changes to government purchases. We document robust evidence that informational insufficiency in conventional models explains inconsistent results across samples and...

To raise the euro's inflation target without an inflationary default and meanwhile to promote growth and the realignment of the relative prices and wages between countries, two other heterodox actions are necessary: the substitution of previously issued bonds by new ones with higher denominated...

This paper studies optimal labor-income taxation in a simple model with credit constraints on firms. The labor-income tax rate and the shadow value on the credit constraint induce a wedge between the marginal product of labor and the marginal rate of substitution between labor and consumption....

Montchrétien was definitely mercantilist. He praises the ancients, their honors and their self-discipline, but notes, like Serra, that there was no concept of Political Economy in Antiquity. The words, however, appear for the first time in the pseudoaristotelian Oeconomica II, where the...

The surge in public debt triggered by the financial crisis has raised uncertainty about future tax pressure and economic activity. We examine the asset pricing effects of fiscal policies in a production-based general equilibrium model in which taxation affects corporate decisions by: i)...

This paper summarizes a research project focused on the empirical determinants of and interrelations between macroeconomic regimes, policies, and performance in the world. The project's hypotheses are structured into three related themes. The first aim is analyzing the determinants of the...

This article summarizes the 80-plus year history of the US federal income tax rules for classifying business entities, concluding that they result largely from administrative and/or legislative reactions to specific problems or legislative accommodations to industry lobbying efforts and do not...

The state budget is, after all, an accounting document. An early form of it shows the predicted public revenues and expenditure during the subsequent financial exercise. The true dimension of the budget appears, however, after implementing the fiscal policy of the government in order to answer...