This paper examines magnitudes and business cycle dynamics of social security contributions (SSC). In most OECD countries studied, we document a negative covariation of payroll tax burdens with GDP and GDP growth at business cycle and lower frequencies. We assess the overall magnitude of the...

This paper connects two salient economic features: (i) Fiscal shocks have asymmetric effects across business cycle phases (Gechert et al., 2019); (ii) Okun's coefficient is time varying and may be unstable. The intertwined dynamic behavior of fiscal shocks and unemployment-output trade-offs are...

We assess how survey expectations impact production and pricing decisions on the basis of a large panel of German firms. We identify the causal effect of expectations by matching firms with the same fundamentals but different views about the future. The probability to raise (lower) production is...

Growth fluctuations exhibit substantial synchronization across countries, which has been viewed as reflecting a global business cycle driven by shocks with worldwide reach, or spillovers resulting from local real and/or financial linkages between countries. This paper brings these two...