This paper investigates the effect of fiscal consolidation on GDP per capita following the 2008 Financial Crisis and European Debt Crisis. I use the synthetic control method to assess the GDP performance of three European countries that pursued large quantities of fiscal consolidation: Greece,...

Recent modeling developments have created tradeoffs between attribution-based models, models that rely on causal relationships, and “pure prediction models†such as neural networks. While forecasters have historically favored one technology or the other based on comfort or loyalty to a...