This article provides a brief history of tax and expenditure limitation initiatives in Oregon, along with a narrative of contemporary events. Largely as a consequence of the initiative’s increased role in the formulation of Oregon’s fiscal policy, state and local taxes paid by Oregon households declined from 7.4 percent of income in 1989 to 6.8 percent in 2003; state revenue, which is heavily d...

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...

To develop a federal budget process that delivers better fiscal outcomes for the nation consistently over an extended period would require new information and analysis, applying these to decisions through properly designed procedures, and strengthening the institutions that support wise fiscal choices. Changes in each of these process components intended to contribute to good fiscal outcomes ar...

The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council. Preface In December 2011 the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council invited me to prepare a report on recent trends and risks in the Swedish housing market. My background for accepting the invitation was my long-standing interest in the Swedish economy and Swedish econo...

Miller (1977) emphasized that optimal corporate financial policy depends on the tax rates facing the firm as well as the tax treatment accorded bondand stock-holders. In equilibrium, firms will issue claims that are held by the full spectrum of investors, from tax-exempt institutional investors to heavily taxed individuals. However, dealers are tax neutral institutions that can buy corporate se...

In the 1970s, taxation of "windfall" profits from primary products and intervention in trade and production tempted governments into expansionary fiscal policies, whilst stifling the private sector and depressing growth. However, the experience of the recent coffee boom has so far been more favourable: those African countries which liberalized and left a large share of the “windfall” with the p...

This paper focuses on the problems involved in developing cross-country comparisons of the intergenerational stance of fiscal policy. Of course, these comparisons are nowadays based on the method of generational accounting and in particular most of them rely on comparing the total size of intertemporal public liabilities (IPLs). I first utilize the machinery of generational accounting in order ...

We use a rich dataset of regional government expenditures for Japan during the 1990-2000 period to estimate from within-prefecture variation the multiplier of government investment and government consumption expenditures. Our main finding is that government spending did not have multipliers effects that are on average larger than one. Government investment had a positive and significant effect ...

This paper studies household asset demands by allowing certain assets to contribute directly to utility. It estimates the parameters of an aggregate utility function which includes both consumption and liquidity services. These liquidity services depend on the level of various asset stocks. We apply these estimates to investigate the longand short-run interest elasticities of demand for money, ...

This paper investigates the nature of U.S. fiscal policy in the aftermath of 9/11. We argue that the recent dramatic fall in the government surplus and the large fall in tax rates cannot be accounted for by either the state of the U.S. economy as of 9/11 or as the typical response of fiscal policy to a large exogenous rise in military expenditures. Our evidence suggests that, had tax rates resp...