The Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy in Stimulating Economic Activity


Book Description

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The focus is on the size of fiscal multipliers, and on the possibility that multipliers can turn negative (i.e., that fiscal contractions can be expansionary). The paper concludes that fiscal multipliers are overwhelmingly positive but small. However, there is some evidence of negative fiscal multipliers.




NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003


Book Description

The NBER Macroeconomics Annual presents pioneering work in macroeconomics by leading academic researchers to an audience of public policymakers and the academic community. Each commissioned paper is followed by comments and discussion. This year's edition provides a mix of cutting-edge research and policy analysis on such topics as productivity and information technology, the increase in wealth inequality, behavioral economics, and inflation.




NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2005


Book Description

The 20th NBER Macroeconomics Annual, covering questions at the cutting edge of macroeconomics that are central to current policy debates.




Fiscal Policy and Long-Term Growth


Book Description

This paper explores how fiscal policy can affect medium- to long-term growth. It identifies the main channels through which fiscal policy can influence growth and distills practical lessons for policymakers. The particular mix of policy measures, however, will depend on country-specific conditions, capacities, and preferences. The paper draws on the Fund’s extensive technical assistance on fiscal reforms as well as several analytical studies, including a novel approach for country studies, a statistical analysis of growth accelerations following fiscal reforms, and simulations of an endogenous growth model.




The New Dynamic Public Finance


Book Description

Optimal tax design attempts to resolve a well-known trade-off: namely, that high taxes are bad insofar as they discourage people from working, but good to the degree that, by redistributing wealth, they help insure people against productivity shocks. Until recently, however, economic research on this question either ignored people's uncertainty about their future productivities or imposed strong and unrealistic functional form restrictions on taxes. In response to these problems, the new dynamic public finance was developed to study the design of optimal taxes given only minimal restrictions on the set of possible tax instruments, and on the nature of shocks affecting people in the economy. In this book, Narayana Kocherlakota surveys and discusses this exciting new approach to public finance. An important book for advanced PhD courses in public finance and macroeconomics, The New Dynamic Public Finance provides a formal connection between the problem of dynamic optimal taxation and dynamic principal-agent contracting theory. This connection means that the properties of solutions to principal-agent problems can be used to determine the properties of optimal tax systems. The book shows that such optimal tax systems necessarily involve asset income taxes, which may depend in sophisticated ways on current and past labor incomes. It also addresses the implications of this new approach for qualitative properties of optimal monetary policy, optimal government debt policy, and optimal bequest taxes. In addition, the book describes computational methods for approximate calculation of optimal taxes, and discusses possible paths for future research.




The Theory of Money and Financial Institutions


Book Description

This first volume in a three-volume exposition of Shubik's vision of "mathematical institutional economics" explores a one-period approach to economic exchange with money, debt, and bankruptcy. This is the first volume in a three-volume exposition of Martin Shubik's vision of "mathematical institutional economics"--a term he coined in 1959 to describe the theoretical underpinnings needed for the construction of an economic dynamics. The goal is to develop a process-oriented theory of money and financial institutions that reconciles micro- and macroeconomics, using as a prime tool the theory of games in strategic and extensive form. The approach involves a search for minimal financial institutions that appear as a logical, technological, and institutional necessity, as part of the "rules of the game." Money and financial institutions are assumed to be the basic elements of the network that transmits the sociopolitical imperatives to the economy. Volume 1 deals with a one-period approach to economic exchange with money, debt, and bankruptcy. Volume 2 explores the new economic features that arise when we consider multi-period finite and infinite horizon economies. Volume 3 will consider the specific role of financial institutions and government, and formulate the economic financial control problem linking micro- and macroeconomics.




A Study in Public Finance


Book Description

This antiquarian book contains a comprehensive treatise on the topic of public finance, with information on taxation, employment, wages, and much more. This is a text that will be of considerable utility to those with an interest in the history and development of modern economical practices, and will make for a valuable addition to collections of allied literature. The chapters of this book include: 'Principles of Compensation', 'Non-transfer and Transfer Expenditures by Government Authorities', 'The Finance of Business Undertakings Operated by Public Authorities', 'The Range Of Government Expenditure', 'The Place of Loans Other than War Loans in Public Finance', and more. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned biography of Arthur Cecil Pigou.




Coordination of Monetary and Fiscal Policies


Book Description

Recently, monetary authorities have increasingly focused on implementing policies to ensure price stability and strengthen central bank independence. Simultaneously, in the fiscal area, market development has allowed public debt managers to focus more on cost minimization. This “divorce” of monetary and debt management functions in no way lessens the need for effective coordination of monetary and fiscal policy if overall economic performance is to be optimized and maintained in the long term. This paper analyzes these issues based on a review of the relevant literature and of country experiences from an institutional and operational perspective.




Dynamic Perspectives on Managerial Decision Making


Book Description

This volume collects research papers addressing topical issues in economics and management with a particular focus on dynamic models which allow to analyze and foster the decision making of firms in dynamic complex environments. The scope of the contributions ranges from daily operational challenges firms face to strategic choices in dynamic industry environments and the analysis of optimal growth paths. The volume also highlights recent methodological developments in the areas of dynamic optimization, dynamic games and meta-heuristics, which help to improve our understanding of (optimal) decision making in a fast evolving economy.




The Inflation-Targeting Debate


Book Description

Over the past fifteen years, a significant number of industrialized and middle-income countries have adopted inflation targeting as a framework for monetary policymaking. As the name suggests, in such inflation-targeting regimes, the central bank is responsible for achieving a publicly announced target for the inflation rate. While the objective of controlling inflation enjoys wide support among both academic experts and policymakers, and while the countries that have followed this model have generally experienced good macroeconomic outcomes, many important questions about inflation targeting remain. In Inflation Targeting, a distinguished group of contributors explores the many underexamined dimensions of inflation targeting—its potential, its successes, and its limitations—from both a theoretical and an empirical standpoint, and for both developed and emerging economies. The volume opens with a discussion of the optimal formulation of inflation-targeting policy and continues with a debate about the desirability of such a model for the United States. The concluding chapters discuss the special problems of inflation targeting in emerging markets, including the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.