In this paper, I examine the effects of money supply, aggregate spending, and aggregate supply shocks on real US stock prices in a structural vector autoregression framework. Overall, the empirical results indicate that each macro shock has important effects on real stock prices. The real stock price impulse responses to the various macro shocks conform to the standard present-value equity valu...

We study the cyclical behavior of fiscal policy to explain why some countries exhibit pro-cyclical fiscal policy stances–being expansionary in good times and contractionary in bad times. We develop a model that links the polarization of preferences over fiscal spending to the pro-cyclicality bias. We then present evidence that social polarization as measured by income inequality and educational...

Stagnation as the new norm and fiscal policy are examined in a New Keynesian model with adaptive learning determining expectations. We impose inflation and consumption lower bounds, which can be relevant when agents are pessimistic. The inflation target is locally stable under learning. Pessimistic initial expectations may sink the economy into steady-state stagnation with deflation. The deflat...

This paper investigates empirically the relationship between the pattern of fiscal policy and the demand for international reserves in developing countries, and how this relationship is associated with political risk and conditional access to global capital markets. It finds evidence that for developing countries with low political risk, countercyclical (procyclical) fiscal policies are associa...

Economic theory points out that immigration of even low-skilled immigrants may improve public finances in Western welfare states, and it is some times suggested that fiscal sustainability problems in Western countries caused by ageing populations could be solved by increasing immigration. We examine consequences of various immigration scenarios using the large-scale computable general equilibri...

Using the standard real business cycle model with lump-sum taxes, we analyze the impact of fiscal policy when agents form expectations using adaptive learning rather than rational expectations (RE). The output multipliers for government purchases are significantly higher under learning, and fall within empirical bounds reported in the literature, which is in sharp contrast to the implausibly lo...

This paper extends the two-class monetary growth model by incorporating fiscal activity along the lines of Pasinetti (Cambridge J. Econ. 13, 25–36). Despite this extension, the Cambridge equation is found to be one of long-run equilibria. It is shown that Fiscal policy decreases the accumulation of capital, through an increase in the proportional tax on profits. An inflationary monetary policy ...

Exploiting three Italian earthquakes as quasi-experiments, we analyze the response of homeowners’ consumption to transfers targeted to finance housing reconstruction over time—which, like loans, mainly affect the liquidity of households’ wealth in the short run. We show that transfers that have no effect on consumption over a multi-year horizon, can have significant heterogeneous effects on imp...

The equity premium puzzle shows that using standard parameters and setup, the Consumption-based Capital Asset Pricing Model’s (CCAPM’s) prediction of the premium associated with systematic risk is out by an order of magnitude. The object of this paper is to consider the implications of each of the broad classes of explanations of the equity premium puzzle for resource allocation, welfare and po...

What is the impact of surprise and anticipated policy changes when agents form expectations using adaptive learning rather than rational expectations? We examine this issue using the standard stochastic real business cycle model with lump-sum taxes. Agents combine knowledge about future policy with econometric forecasts of future wages and interest rates. Dynamics under learning can have large ...