This paper explores the interaction between fiscal policy and unemployment. It develops a novel dynamic model in which unemployment can arise but can be mitigated by tax cuts and public spending increases. Such policies are fiscally costly, but can be financed by issuing government debt. In the context of this model, the paper analyzes the simultaneous determination of fiscal policy and unemplo...

This paper reviews the analysis of fiscal policy in the new open economy macroeconomics literature, in view of increasing interest in the question of transmission and coordination of policies across countries, stirred by developments in this literature and by the formation of the euro area. The analysis focuses on two main points: (i) the identification of welfare spillover effects to third cou...

The purpose of this study is to provide a macroeconomic analysis of fiscal policy in the Czech Republic during the transformation period 1989-1995. In contrast to those studies which are based on “decline accounting”, disentangling different factors from each other and ascribing to them specific roles in the overall decline, this study focuses exclusively on fiscal policy and tries to identify ...

Calls for institutional investors to divest (sell off) tobacco stocks threaten the industry's share values, publicise its bad behaviour, and label it as a politically unacceptable ally. US tobacco control advocates began urging government investment and pension funds to divest as a matter of responsible social policy in 1990. Following the initiation of Medicaid recovery lawsuits in 1994, advoc...

We study the behavior of output, employment, consumption, and investment in Germany during the Great Depression of 1928-37. In this time period, real wages were countercyclical, and productivity and fiscal policy were procyclical. We use the neoclassical growth model to investigate how much these factors contribute to the Depression. We find that real wages, which were significantly above their...

* Marc Robinson is a European-based international consultant and trainer. This article was written when he was a senior economist in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund. The author gratefully acknowledges the valuable comments of Marco Cangiano, Ian Lienert, Gösta Ljungman, David Fjord Nielsen, Eivind Tandberg and participants in a seminar in the Fiscal Affairs Depa...

We find that U.S. corporations’ demand for liquidity is sensitive to two important factors: uncertainty facing the firm and the quality of corporate governance. Following prior research, we find that both factors have important influences on firms’ cash holdings. Our results also indicate that the interactions between uncertainty and governance measures are significant. From a policy perspectiv...

This paper focuses on long-run estimation of the price equation in the United States for the period of 1973Q1-2011Q3. It was found the Sargent and Wallace view that an easy monetary policy today will result in a lower price level over the long run when debt and deficit exist is true for the United Sates. Furthermore, it was found that, over the long run, a higher real exchange rate, government ...

This paper examines the first-best fiscal policy in a stochastic, infinite-horizon representative agent model that exhibits consumption-enhanced as well as wealth-enhanced social status in the household utility. We show that the first-best labor tax rate is a positive constant that is used to correct negative consumption externalities. The first-best capital tax rate is also positive in order t...