The nature of the business cycle, particularly in the United States, has changed dramatically over the past several decades. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. economy often whipsawed up and down. Since then, real economic activity stabilized considerably, entering a period economists call...

A growing body of evidence finds that policy reaction functions vary substantially over different periods in the United States. This paper explores how moving to an environment in which monetary and fiscal regimes evolve according to a Markov process can change the impacts of policy shocks. In...

A growing body of evidence finds that policy reaction functions vary substantially over different periods in the United States. This paper explores how moving to an environment in which monetary and fiscal regimes evolve according to a Markov process can change the impacts of policy shocks....

We use a rational expectations framework to assess the implications of rising debt in an environment with an unknown ‘fiscal limit.’ The fiscal limit is defined as the point where the government no longer has the ability to further expand its existing debt stock, so either fiscal or monetary...

We develop a rational expectations framework to study the consequences of alternative means to resolve the "unfunded liabilities'' problem---unsustainable exponential growth in federal Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending with no plan to finance it. Resolution requires specifying a...

Increases in government spending trigger substitution effects both inter- and intra-temporal and a wealth effect. The ultimate impacts on the economy hinge on current and expected monetary and fiscal policy behavior. Studies that impose active monetary policy and passive fiscal policy typically...