The possibility of the so called "non-Keynesian" was illustrated by several fiscal episodes in Europe during the last two decades, giving rise to a growing body of both theoretical and empirical literature. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, a simple two period model for private consumption is presented in order to explain the possibility of both Keynesian and non-Keynesian effects of...

Well before the global financial crisis, the stance of fiscal policy in a number of countries had raised concerns about risks for the outcomes of monetary policy. To provide some insights this paper examines the fiscal-monetary interactions in a novel game theory framework with asynchronous timing of moves. It generalizes the standard commitment concept of Stackelberg leadership by making it dy...

No ONE WOULD dream of designing the human anatomy by disconnecting the controls of the left and right sides of the body. Yet, for the most important economic controls in a modern economy, monetary and fiscal policies, economists today generally endorse the separation of powers as a way of optimizing noninflationary growth. What are the costs and benefits of coordination and independence in macr...

The tax-expenditure hypothesis posed by Milton Friedman emphasizes a positive causal relationship between government tax revenues and government expenditures. If citizens do not have a correct perception of the real tax burden and under-estimate the price of public goods and services, there is a negative causal relationship between tax revenues and government expenditures, which indicates exist...

Though fiscal policies of central governments sometimes provide modest insurance against regional income shocks, this paper shows that pro-cyclical fiscal policy among provincial governments can easily overwhelm these stabilizing effects. We examine the cyclicality of budget items among provincial governments in eight federations, showing that own-source taxes are highly pro-cyclical and contra...

Introduction 1. The long-run historical record 2. International perspective: the role of growth and fiscal policy 3. Other reasons for the decline in saving 3.1 Credit and insurance markets 3.2 Social security 3.3 Demographic factors 4. Do micro data help us to understand the decline in saving?

This paper uses a model with a continuum of equilibrium steady state unemployment rates to explore the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The existence of multiple steady state equilibria is explained by the presence of search and recruiting costs. I use the model to explain the current financial crisis as a shift to a high unemployment equilibrium, induced by the self-fulfilling beliefs of market...