Under a discretionary regime the monetary authority makes no commitments about future money and prices. Then, if surprise inflation conveys economic benefits and if people form expectations rationally, it turns out that the equilibrium involves high and variable monetary growth and inflation....

The national accounts include the Fed's payments to the Treasury as a component of corporate taxes. These payments constituted 22% of reported corporate profits taxes in 1981. This paper discusses alternative concepts of inflationary finance. Measures for these concepts are reported for the...

Some previous analyses have suggested that the smoothing of tax rates over time would be a desirable guide for public debt management. One implication of this viewpoint is that future changes in tax rates would be unpredictable based on current information. This proposition is tested by...

Because of a small direct negative effect on private spending, temporary variations in government purchases as in wartime, would have a strong positive effect on aggregate demand. Intertemporal substitution effects would direct work and production toward these periods where output was valued...

Estimates of marginal tax rates (MTRs) faced by individual economic agents, and for various aggregates of taxpayers, are important for economists testing behavioural responses to changes in those tax rates. This paper reports estimates of a number of personal marginal income tax rate measures...

The tax-smoothing theory suggests that deficits would respond particularly to recession, temporarily high government spending, and anticipated inflation. My empirical estimates indicate that a relation of this type is reasonably stable in the U.S. since at least 1920. In particular, the...

In this short book, Robert Barro, one of the world's leading economists, examines the causes and consequences of the financial crash. In particular, he looks at the effects of fiscal stimulus packages and suggests that, whilst they may lead to an immediate positive impact on growth, the effect...