The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief and Reconciliation Act of 2003 has been described as textbook fiscal stimulus. Using household survey data on the self-reported qualitative response to the tax cuts, we estimate that the boost to aggregate personal consumption expenditures from the child credit...

Bills to expand individual retirement accounts have been introduced in both houses of Congress this year. While proponents argue that these accounts can help reverse the nation's declining saving rate, recent economic research suggests that the effect of the accounts on savings is in fact quite...

This paper develops an overlapping agents model with age-specific mortality rates. The analytical framework also nests Blanchard's (1985) perpetual youth model as a special, though perhaps not realistic, case. With age specific mortality rates, youth is fleeting. Using standard hyperbolic...

This paper develops a model to examine the macroeconomic implications of population aging. Using a general equilibrium framework, the analysis examines the various channels through which changes in demographics affect the economy. Age-earnings profiles are taken to summarize differences in...

Evans (1991) has demonstrated that Blanchard`s (1985) finite-horizon model obeys approximate Ricardian equivalence. We show that this result is determined largely by an unrealistic assumption that labor income grows monotonically over a consumer`s entire lifetime. Introducing more realistic...

This paper examines the macroeconomic implications of life-cycle and dynastic saving behavior for closed and small, open economies. Using an extended version of Blanchard`s overlapping agents model, the analytical framework nests these two competing views, treating agents as either dynastic...

We evaluate the consistency of two methods for estimating the effect of an economic policy: i) surveying people to report the change in their behavior caused by the policy, ii) inferring this change using (reported) actual behavior and differences in treatment across people. Both methods have...

The theoretical literature presumes generational risk is large enough to merit study and that such risk can be meaningfully shared via appropriate government policy. This paper questions these propositions. It develops an 80-period OLG model to directly measure generational risk and the extent...

This paper uses a multi region DSGE model with collateral constrained households and residential investment to examine the effectiveness of fiscal policy stimulus measures in a credit crisis. The paper explores alternative scenarios which differ by the type of budgetary measure, its length, the...

Recent empirical evidence strongly points to the state-dependence of fiscal multipliers which are larger in recessions than in expansions. Yet, standard business cycle models face great difficulty in producing such asymmetric fiscal policy effects. By incorporating endogenously binding...