Search Results
Working Paper
Models and measures of fiscal policy
Working Paper
The automatic fiscal stabilizers: quietly doing their thing
This paper presents theoretical and empirical analysis of automatic fiscal stabilizers, such as the income tax and unemployment insurance benefits. Using the modern theory of consumption behavior, we identify several channels--insurance effects, wealth effects and liquidity constraints- -through which the optimal reaction of household consumption plans to aggregate income shocks is tempered by the automatic fiscal stabilizers. In addition we identify a cash flow channel for investment. The empirical importance of automatic stabilizers is addressed in several ways. We estimate elasticities of ...
Working Paper
The effect of taxes on money demand and aggregate demand
Working Paper
A retrospective evaluation of the effects of temporary partial expensing
This paper examines how business investment responded to temporary partial expensing, first enacted in 2002 and expanded in 2003. In principle, partial expensing boosted the incentive to invest which should have had a discernable impact on spending. However, the tax changes did not occur in a vacuum, so it is challenging to isolate their impact. Our empirical approach exploits a feature of the tax change which, under certain assumptions, allows us to cleanly estimate its impact. Specifically, partial expensing provided relatively generous tax treatment for long-lived assets. We use this ...
Working Paper
A critical analysis of the Eisner-Pieper fiscal measure
Working Paper
An analysis of government spending in the frequency domain
This paper utilizes frequency-domain techniques to identify and characterize economically important properties of government spending. Using post-war data for the United States, the paper first identifies peaks in the estimated spectra of the major components of fiscal spending. Second, the paper examines the relationship between these fiscal variables and various measures of aggregate economic activity. The analysis reveals that defense spending is best modeled as exogenous with respect to the aggregate economy and that nondefense spending (growth) appears to be white noise. Further, the ...
Journal Article
The automatic fiscal stabilizers: quietly doing their thing
Working Paper
Motor vehicle stocks, scrappage, and sales
This paper offers a new framework for analyzing aggregate sales of new motor vehicles that incorporates separate models for the change in the vehicle stock and for the rate of vehicle scrappage. Because this approach requires only a minimal set of assumptions about demographic trends, the state of the economy, consumer "preferences," new vehicle prices and repair costs, and vehicle retirements, it is shown to be especially useful as a macroeconomic forecasting tool. In addition, a new historical annual time series estimate of motor vehicle stocks in the United States is presented.