The Macroeconomy After Tariffs

Globalisation and the macroeconomy

Although the topic of globalisation has received considerable attention in many circles, it remains a phenomenon that we are still striving to understand. Not only can globalisation not be captured in a single measure or index, but its economic impacts are also difficult to isolate given the complexities in disentangling globalisation from other important structural changes that have occurred i...

Oil and the Macroeconomy

Agriculture and the Macroeconomy

It is argued that from the viewpoint of efficiency, agriculture should not be taxed relative to other sectors, and neither should it be favored. Nevertheless, developing countries have traditionally taxed the agricultural sector while developed countries have protected it, and both have incurred efficiency losses. Based on Schiff and Valdes (1992), it was shown that the taxation of agriculture ...

Voting and the Macroeconomy

The people have been promised more than can be promised; they have been given hopes that it will be impossible to realize ... The expenses of the new regime will actually be heavier than the old. And in the last analysis the people will judge the revolution by this fact alone-does it take more or less money? Are they better off? Do they have more work? And is that work better paid? All Politica...

Credit Risk and the Macroeconomy

We construct a new credit spread index, employing an extensive micro-level data set of secondary market prices of outstanding senior unsecured bonds over the 1973– 2009 period. Compared with the standard default-risk indicators such as the Baa-Aaa corporate bond spread and the paper-bill spread, our credit spread index is a robust predictor of future economic activity across a variety of econom...