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Working Paper
Fiscal policy: ex ante and ex post
The surge in fiscal deficits since 2008 has put a renewed focus on the authors? understanding of fiscal policy. The interaction of fiscal and monetary policy during this period has also been the subject of much discussion and analysis. This paper gives new insight into past fiscal policy and its influence on monetary policy by examining the U.S. Federal Reserve Board staff?s Greenbook forecasts of fiscal policy. The authors create a real-time database of the Greenbook forecasts of fiscal policy, examine the forecast performance in terms of bias and effciency, and explore the implications for ...
Journal Article
Federal Government Outlays Remain Historically Elevated, Spurred by Robust Transfers
Over the past six decades, the federal government has shifted a larger share of its outlays toward transfer payments to individuals and state and local governments. These longer-run trends were exacerbated during the pandemic, leading to higher deficits for the federal government and an increasingly high share of federal outlays supporting the economy through consumer spending.
Journal Article
Accounting for changes in the U.S. budget deficit
Troy Davig and Michael Redmond gauge the contributions of three factors to the declining U.S. federal budget deficit.
Discussion Paper
The Rapidly Changing Nature of Japan’s Public Debt
Japan’s general government debt-to-GDP ratio is the highest of advanced economies, due in part to increased spending on social services for an aging population and a level of nominal GDP that has not increased for two decades. The interest rate payments from taxpayers on this debt are moderated by income earned on government assets and by low interest rates. One might think that the Bank of Japan’s purchases of government bonds would further ease the burden on taxpayers, with interest payments to the Bank of Japan on its bond holdings rebated back to the government. Merging the balance ...
Working Paper
FISCAL SURPRISES AT THE FOMC
This paper provides a detailed examination of a new set of fiscal forecasts for the U.S. assembled by Croushore and van Norden (2017) from FOMC briefing books. The data are of particular interest because (1) they afford a look at fiscal forecasts over six complete business cycles and several fiscal policy regimes, covering both peacetime and several wars, (2) the forecasts were precisely those presented to monetary policymakers, (3) they include frequently updated estimates of both actual and cyclically adjusted deficits, (4) unlike most other U.S. fiscal forecasts, they were neither partisan ...
Discussion Paper
Fiscal Drag from the State and Local Sector?
With July just around the corner, most cities and states are preparing for the start of a new fiscal year. Since the start of the recent recession, some have worried that fiscal stress on the sector would result in massive municipal bond defaults. At the end of 2011, many breathed a sigh of relief as aggregate state government revenues finally re-attained the peak they had achieved before tumbling during and after the recession. Unfortunately, relief may be premature. When adjusted for inflation, 2011 state tax revenues were still below their levels of four years ago, and local tax revenue ...
Report
The Monetary and Fiscal History of Argentina, 1960-2017
In this chapter, we review the monetary and fiscal history of Argentina for the period 1960?2017, a time during which the country suffered several balance of payments crises, three periods of hyperinflation, two defaults on government debt, and three banking crises. All told, between 1969 and 1991, after several monetary reforms, thirteen zeros had been removed from its currency. We argue that all these events are the symptom of a recurrent problem: Argentina?s unsuccessful attempts to tame the fiscal deficit. An implication of our analysis is that the future economic evolution of Argentina ...