Search Results
Working Paper
How Biased Are U.S. Government Forecasts of the Federal Debt?
Government debt and forecasts thereof attracted considerable attention during the recent financial crisis. The current paper analyzes potential biases in different U.S. government agencies? one-year-ahead forecasts of U.S. gross federal debt over 1984-2012. Standard tests typically fail to detect biases in these forecasts. However, impulse indicator saturation (IIS) detects economically large and highly significant time-varying biases, particularly at turning points in the business cycle. These biases do not appear to be politically related. IIS defines a generic procedure for examining ...
Journal Article
Pensions in peril
Journal Article
Federal fiscal policy in the 1960's
Journal Article
The federal budget for rearmament
Journal Article
Institutions and government growth: a comparison of the 1890s and the 1930s
Statistics on the size and growth of the U.S. federal government, in addition to public statements by President Franklin Roosevelt, seem to indicate that the Great Depression was the primary event that caused the dramatic growth in government spending and intervention in the private sector that continues to the present day. Through a comparison of the economic conditions of the 1890s and the 1930s, the authors argue that post-1930 government growth in the United States is not the direct result of the Great Depression, but rather is a result of institutional, legal, and societal changes that ...
Journal Article
The federal budget for 1956
Speech
Managing crises without government guarantees—how do we get there?
Remarks at Banking Law Symposium 2011, Paris, France.
Newsletter
Should the federal government bail out the states? Lessons from past recessions
Like the economy in general, individual state economies are struggling in this recession. State governments face significant constraints in raising additional revenues. Most states are required to balance their budgets regardless of the economic environment. This article considers the role of the federal government in helping the states to manage their finances.
Journal Article
On the size and growth of government
The size of the U.S. federal government, as well as state and local governments, increased dramatically during the 20th century. This paper reviews several theories of government size and growth that are dominant in the public choice and political science literature. The theories are divided into two categories: citizen-over-state theories and state-over-citizen theories. The relationship between the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the timing of government growth is also presented. It is likely that portions of each theory can explain government size and growth, but the challenge ...
Journal Article
The federal budget in the transition economy