This paper examines the state-dependent multipliers of government spending in sudden stop economies. First, I provide cross-country evidence that an increase is more effective stimulating consumption and appreciating real exchange rate crises than normal times. To rationalize this, then build a small open economy model with collateral constraint on international borrowing. During financial cris...

This paper explores how features of the electoral and party system affects the composition and efficiency of government spending--specifically government spending on education. In doing so we contribute to the literature the connection between institutions spending on two fronts. First, we move beyond the simple institutional dichotomies that characterize many existing studies (e.g. presidentia...

The federal government is larger than conventional budget measures suggest. Many tax preferences are effectively spending programs. Adding these spending-like tax preferences to federal outlays and receipts makes the government appear about 4 percent of GDP larger. The 1986 tax reform cut these benefits, but they have since rebounded to a larger share of GDP than before. Using this broader meas...

Do voters effectively hold elected officials accountable for policy decisions? Using data on natural disasters, government spending, and election returns, we show that voters reward the incumbent presidential party for delivering disaster relief spending, but not for investing in disaster preparedness spending. These inconsistencies distort the incentives of public officials, leading the govern...

This paper presents estimates of the effects that terms of trade volatility has on real GDP per capita growth. Based on 5-year non-overlapping panel data comprising 175 countries during 1980-2010, the paper finds that terms of trade volatility has significant adverse effects on economic growth in countries with procyclical government spending; in countries where government spending is countercy...

considering the importance of government fiscal policy (government spending and state tax income) in economy and its effectiveness in well-being of people, this paper examines the effects of fiscal policy on poverty during the period 1386-1363 in iran. in this paper, considering the fact that poverty changes can be divided to changes in economic growth and changes in income distribution; initia...

Previous studies on fiscal policy at the zero bound have focused on models with perfect foresight. However, the recent economic environment motivating such research is characterized by a high degree of uncertainty. This paper studies optimal government spending and monetary policy when the nominal interest rate is subject to the zero lower bound constraint in a stochastic environment. In the pr...