This paper provides a set of detailed estimated fiscal reaction functions for a panel of twenty industrialized countries, and it discusses commonalities and differences with regard to systematic fiscal policies across countries. In general, the countries in the panel adjust tax revenues strongly in response to the public debt, and they adjust tax revenues and transfer payments, but, interestingly, not tax rates, strongly in response to output fluctuations. Some countries such as Germany appear to adjust government consumption and investment relatively strongly in response to the public debt, while the United States adjusts capital tax rates relatively strongly. In general, an increased emphasis in the theoretical literature on the effects of procyclical tax revenues and countercyclical transfer payments as automatic stabilizers may be warranted.
This paper proposes and tests a theory of credit-driven asset bubbles which are neutral in their real effects. When a lender such as a government, central bank, or banking sector is willing to lend infinitely against collateral, explosive asset bubbles can form which exactly offset a bubble in household liabilities. Surprisingly, evidence from a VAR using long-run restrictions supports the idea that asset bubbles are approximately neutral in their real effects before 2007. The evidence becomes more ambiguous if one includes post-2007 data, hinting that the post-2007 degree of comovement between asset prices and output comes from an unusual regime.
This paper documents the systematic response of postwar U.S. fiscal policy to fiscal imbalances and the business cycle using a multivariate Fiscal Taylor Rule. Adjustments to taxes and purchases both account for a large portion of the fiscal response to debt, while authorities seem reluctant to adjust transfers. As expected, taxes are highly procyclical; purchases are acyclical; and transfers are countercyclical. Neither pattern has changed much over time, except that adjustment happens more slowly after 1981 than before 1980. The role of adjustments to purchases in stabilizing the debt indicates that the recent discussion about spending reversals is highly relevant.
In modern macroeconomic models it is difficult to obtain explosive price bubbles on assets with positive net supply. This paper shows that it is possible to obtain explosive bubbles in certain situations when assets such as land are used as collateral and lenders are willing to lend freely against it. As land prices rise, collateral constraints become relaxed, and households wish to borrow more. If the financial sector or government is willing to accommodate this by issuing credit indefinitely, this can lead to self-fulfilling equilibria where land has a positive, purely speculative, value. Furthermore, such bubbles need not affect real allocations in the absence of other market imperfections, even when land is a factor in production.
Recent research and events have brought fiscal policy back into the spotlight. Fiscal Taylor rules and error correction models have represented two different ways of quantifying the feedbacks from fiscal and economic conditions to fiscal policy decisions. This paper synthesizes these two ideas, estimating a fiscal Taylor rule as a special case of an error correction model. Using quarterly postwar U.S. data, estimates of a fiscal Taylor rule find that the government sector has sought to stabilize its debt through adjustments to purchases and taxes, in that order, with very little stabilization coming through adjustments to transfer payments. Since 1981, the debt-stabilization motive has almost vanished, while the cyclical behavior of fiscal variables has not changed. This provides indirect evidence that fiscal policy may have become "non-Ricardian" in the US during recent decades.
This paper estimates a series of shocks to hit the US economy during the Great Depression, using a New Keynesian model with unemployment and bargaining frictions. Shocks to long-run inflation expectations appear to account for much of the cyclical behavior of employment, while an increase in labor's bargaining power also played an important role in deepening and lengthening the Depression. Government spending played very little role during the Hoover Administration and New Deal, until the rise in military spending effectively brought an end to the Depression in 1941. With the economy at or near the zero interest rate bound, interest rates and monetary aggregates provided a misleading indicator as to the true stance of inflation expectations; in fact, conditions were deflationary all throughout the 1930s in spite of high money growth and low interest rates. The experience of the 1930s offers lessons to modern policymakers who find themselves in a similar situation.
Chapter I estimates a series of shocks to a labor matching model with money and sticky prices, using U.S. data from the Great Depression. These shocks consist of shocks to the supply and demand for money, to short-run and long-run productivity, to labor supply, and to labor's share of bargaining surpluses. The estimates, based on a persistent downward shift in the Beveridge curve combined with persistently high wages, suggest that a rise in labor's share of bargaining surpluses accounts for a large part of the contraction and most of the slow recovery during the Depression. Shocks to labor supply explain some the slow recovery and monetary shocks explain some of the contraction. Shocks to productivity do not seem to have been important during this period. Chapter II shows that the same model can match labor's share of income rather well using postwar data. However, it cannot explain much of the behavior of employment and vacancies without resorting to additional shocks beyond monetary and productivity shocks. As with other New Keynesian models, the model suggests that monetary policy shocks can account for only a small portion of postwar fluctuations apart from the Volcker episode. Productivity shocks can account for some of the behavior of labor's share and employment during the late 1960s and the early 1980s. Most recessions, however, appear driven by other shocks. Chapter III estimates a fiscal policy rule using postwar U.S. data in order to understand how governments set fiscal policy in order to stabilize the debt-GDP ratio. This chapter synthesizes the literature on fiscal Taylor rules and error correction models, treating the former as a special case of the latter. The estimated rule suggests that the government sector has stabilized deficits through adjustments to purchases and taxes, in that order. It has appeared extremely reluctant to adjust transfers in response to fiscal imbalances. Cyclically, government spending and transfers as a share of output rise strongly with unemployment while taxes fall strongly. Furthermore, since 1981, the government sector has stabilized deficits much less aggressively, while the cyclical behavior of fiscal variables has not changed
The Ethiopian government initiated the Ethiopian Coffee Trademarking and Licensing Initiative in 2004 for three coffee origins: Sidama, Yirgacheffe and Harar. Following a court case between Starbucks and the Ethiopian government regarding this initiative, Oxfam organized a publicity campaign. This paper evaluates the effect of these interventions on the export prices of trademarked Ethiopian coffees. We find that the prices of the trademarked coffees increased by about 10% following these interventions. The magnitude of this change is comparable with the farm gate prices reported in the literature; however, we cannot establish direct causation or observe the passthrough into farm gate prices.
The Ethiopian government initiated the Ethiopian Coffee Trademarking and Licensing Initiative in 2004 for three coffee origins: Sidama, Yirgacheffe and Harar. Following a court case between Starbucks and the Ethiopian government regarding this initiative, Oxfam organized a publicity campaign. This paper evaluates the effect of these interventions on the export prices of trademarked Ethiopian coffees. We find that the prices of the trademarked coffees increased by about 10\% following these interventions. The magnitude of this change is comparable with the farm gate prices reported in the literature; however, we cannot establish direct causation or observe the passthrough into farm gate prices.
We estimate a seven-variable-VAR for the U.S. economy on postwar data using long-run restrictions, taking changes in long-run interest rates and inflation expectations into account. We find a strong connection between oil prices and long-run nominal interest rates which has lasted throughout the entire postwar period. We find that a simple off-the-shelf theoretical model of oil prices and monetary policy, where oil prices are flexible and other prices are sticky, in fact predicts a strong relationship if inflation and oil prices were driven by monetary policy. The observed magnitude of this relationship is still a bit of a puzzle, but this finding does call into question the identification techniques commonly used to identify oil shocks.
