Can discretionary increases in government spending stimulate the economy? We answer this question by taking into account both the information flow on fiscal measures and the role played by information frictions. Using a novel set of empirical proxies for fiscal news and agents' misperceptions,...

Using state-dependent local projection methods and historical U.S. data, we find that government spending multipliers are considerably larger in periods of private debt overhang. In particular, we find significant crowding-out of personal consumption and investment in low-debt states, resulting...

We analyse if the adoption of a fiscal rule insulates the domestic economy from commodity price fluctuations in a resource-rich economy. To do so we develop a timevarying Dynamic Factor Model, in which both the volatility of structural shocks and the systematic fiscal policy responses are...

This version: March 28, 2016 First version: February 2014 {{p}} Structural DSGE models are used both for analyzing policy and the sources of business cycles. Conclusions based on full structural models are, however, potentially affected by misspecification. A competing method is to use partially...

We introduce imperfect information in stock prices determination. Agents receive a noisy signal about the structural shock driving future dividend variations. Equilibrium stock prices include a transitory "noise bubble" which can be responsible for boom and bust episodes unrelated to economic...

We investigate the role of "noise" shocks as a source of business cycle fluctuations. To do so we set up a simple model of imperfect information and derive restrictions for identifying the noise shock in a VAR model. The novelty of our approach is that identification is reached by means of...

We propose an analytical framework based on the Kalman Filter to quantify central distortionary effects of product-specific subsidies. In our application, we use time series of foreign and domestic order book levels during and after the temporary installation of a “cash for clunkers” subsidy...

Short-time work is a labor market policy that subsidizes working time reductions among firms in financial difficulty to prevent layoffs. Many OECD countries have used this policy in the Great Recession. This paper shows that the effects of short-time work are strongly time dependent and...

This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of government spending shocks in New Zealand. Using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model, I find small output multipliers for government consumption but large multipliers for government investment. Importantly, the real exchange rate...

Conventional wisdom suggests that the government spending multiplier is larger when the central bank raises nominal interest rates less than one for one to inflation. However, models supporting this consensus estimate multipliers while holding the monetary policy rule constant after a government...