We document a clear downward trend in labor market fluidity that is common across a variety of measures of worker and job turnover. This trend dates to at least the early 1980s if not somewhat earlier. Next we pull together evidence on a variety of hypotheses that might explain this downward...

A major change of the property tax system in 2011 generated significant variation in the amount of housing taxes paid by Italian households. Using new questions added to the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), we exploit this variation to provide an unprecedented analysis of the...

In 2011 the Government of El Salvador implemented a reform to the gas subsidy that increased the welfare of households in all but the top two deciles of the income distribution. However, the reform turned out to be rather unpopular, especially among winners. This paper relies on ad hoc household...

Argentina's government has resorted to fiscal policy as a countercyclical tool to mitigate the negative impact of the current economic downturn on aggregate demand. Empirical results based on a vector error correction model suggest, however, that the fiscal multiplier is relatively small and...

A major change of the property tax system in 2011 generated significant variation in the amount of housing taxes paid by Italian households. Using new questions added to the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), we exploit this variation to provide an unprecedented analysis of the...

A law issued to allocate reconstruction grants following the 2009 "Aquilano" earthquake has resulted in a large and unanticipated discontinuity across municipalities with comparable damages. Using diff-in-diff analysis we estimate the "local spending" and the "local tax" multipliers -- according...

Argentina's government has resorted to fiscal policy as a countercyclical tool to mitigate the negative impact of the current economic downturn on aggregate demand. Empirical results based on a vector error correction model suggest, however, that the fiscal multiplier is relatively small and...

We estimate the effect of local government expenditures on local economic activity. Following the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, disaster relief grants from the Italian central government caused a large and unanticipated expansion in municipal government expenditures. Using a threshold in grant...

We document a clear downward trend in labor market fluidity that is common across a variety of measures of worker and job turnover. This trend dates to at least the early 1980s if not somewhat earlier. Next we pull together evidence on a variety of hypotheses that might explain this downward...