We examine austerity in advanced economies since the Great Recession. Austerity shocks are reductions in government purchases that exceed reduced-form forecasts. Austerity shocks are statistically associated with lower real GDP, lower inflation and higher net exports. We estimate a...

We exploit differences across U.S. states in terms of their exposure to trade to study the effects of changes in the exchange rate on economic activity at the business cycle frequency. We find that a depreciation in the state-specific trade-weighted real exchange rate is associated with an...

As of August 2015, Greece's loan repayments due to external creditors through 2057 summed to €319.5 billion, requiring an average debt payment on a flow basis of 4.1 percent of 2014 Greek GDP. This paper examines the economic impact of increases in distortionary taxes on consumption, capital...

We present a model of the market for used cars in which agents face a fixed cost of adjustment, the magnitude of which depend on the degree of adverse selection in the secondary market. We find that, unlike typical models, the sS bands in our model contract as the variance of the shock process...

The distinction between production and purchases of investment goods is essential for quantifying the response to changes in investment tax incentives. If investment goods are tradeable, a large fraction of the demand from changes in tax subsidies will be met from abroad. This difference between...

Phased-in tax reductions are a common feature of tax legislation. This paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium model to quantify the effects of delaying tax cuts. According to the analysis of the model, the phased-in tax cuts of the 2001 tax law substantially reduced employment, output, and...

Multi-sector sticky price models have surprising implications when durable goods have flexible prices. While in actual data the production of virtually all durables exhibits strong negative responses to monetary contractions, in dynamic general equilibrium models a monetary contraction causes...

Is the variety of products supplied in markets a reflection of the diversity of consumers' preferences? In this paper, we argue that the distribution of durable goods offered in markets tends to be compressed relative to the distribution of consumers' underlying preferences. In particular, there...

We present a model in which banks trade toxic assets to raise funds for investment. The toxic assets generate an adverse selection problem and, as a consequence, the interbank asset market provides insufficient liquidity to finance investment. While the best investments are fully funded,...

We develop a dynamic equilibrium model of labor demand with adverse selection. Firms learn the quality of newly hired workers after a period of employment. Adverse selection makes it costly to hire new workers and to release productive workers. As a result, firms hoard labor and under-react to...