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Working Paper
The Nonlinear Effects of Fiscal Policy
We argue that the fiscal multiplier of government purchases is nonlinear in the size of the spending shock. In particular, the multiplier is increasing in the spending shock, with more expansionary government spending shocks generating larger multipliers and more contractionary shocks generating smaller multipliers. We document that empirically this holds true across time, countries and types of shocks. We then propose a neoclassical mechanism that hinges on the relationship between fiscal shocks, their form of financing, and the response of labor supply across the wealth distribution. A ...
Working Paper
Perturbation methods for Markov-switching DSGE models
Markov-switching DSGE (MSDSGE) modeling has become a growing body of literature on economic and policy issues related to structural shifts. This paper develops a general perturbation methodology for constructing high-order approximations to the solutions of MSDSGE models. Our new method, called "the partition perturbation method," partitions the Markov-switching parameter space to keep a maximum number of time-varying parameters from perturbation. For this method to work in practice, we show how to reduce the potentially intractable problem of solving MSDSGE models to the manageable problem ...
Working Paper
The Role of Oil Price Shocks in Causing U.S. Recessions
Although oil price shocks have long been viewed as one of the leading candidates for explaining U.S. recessions, surprisingly little is known about the extent to which oil price shocks explain recessions. We provide a formal analysis of this question with special attention to the possible role of net oil price increases in amplifying the transmission of oil price shocks. We quantify the conditional recessionary effect of oil price shocks in the net oil price increase model for all episodes of net oil price increases since the mid-1970s. Compared to the linear model, the cumulative effect of ...
Working Paper
The Nonlinear Effects of Fiscal Policy
We argue that the fiscal multiplier of government purchases is nonlinear in the size of the spending shock. In particular, the multiplier is increasing in the spending shock, with more expansionary government spending shocks generating larger multipliers and more contractionary shocks generating smaller multipliers. We document that empirically this holds true across time, countries and types of shocks. We then propose a neoclassical mechanism that hinges on the relationship between fiscal shocks, their form of financing, and the response of labor supply across the wealth distribution. A ...