This paper empirically quantifies the importance of fiscal policy in shaping the monetary policy transmission mechanism and derives implications for monetary-fiscal interactions. First, we document that a contractionary monetary policy shock, besides lowering output and prices, leads to a...

Using a novel regional database covering over 200 elections in several European countries, this paper provides new empirical evidence on the political consequences of fiscal consolidations. To identify exogenous reductions in regional public spending, we use a Bartik-type instrument that...

Using panel data of 17 OECD countries for 1980-2011, we find that the distributional consequences of fiscal consolidations depend significantly on the level of private indebtedness. Austerity leads to a strong and persistent increase in income inequality during periods of private debt overhang....

This study provides empirical evidence that the costs of austerity crucially depend on the level of private indebtedness. In particular, fiscal consolidations lead to severe contractions when implemented in high private debt states. Contrary, fiscal consolidations have no significant effect on...

We estimate the effect of government spending shocks on the US economy with a time-varying parameter vector autoregression. The recent Great Recession period appears to be characterized by uniquely large impulse responses of output to fiscal shocks. Moreover, the particularity of this period is...

We use Swedish administrative individual-level data to document five facts about the distributional income effects of monetary policy. (i) The effects of monetary policy shocks are Ushaped with respect to the income distribution—i.e., expansionary shocks increase the incomes of high- and...