One of the major challenges of empirical tax research is the identification and calculation of appropriate tax data. While there is consensus that average marginal tax rates are most suitable for studying the effects of tax policy on economic growth, due to data limitations the calculation of...

This paper estimates the magnitudes of government spending and tax multipliers within a regime-switching framework for the U.S economy during the period 1949:1- 2006:4. Our results show that the magnitudes of spending multipliers are larger during periods of low economic activity, while the...

We investigate the dynamic effects of five different fiscal shocks on the US economy using a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model that uses Blanchard-Quah type restrictions. We find that an increase in indirect taxes or in corporate taxes has a contractionary effect on the economy,...

This paper investigates how innovations in income taxes and government purchases originating in the U.S. affect the U.S. economy, and how these effects are transmitted to the Canadian economy. Using a semi-structural VAR model and data for both countries for the 1961:1-2004:3 period, we find...

We investigate the dynamic effects of five different fiscal shocks on the US economy using a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model that uses Blanchard-Quah type restrictions. We find that an increase in indirect taxes or in corporate taxes has a contractionary effect on the economy,...

We revisit the idea that colonized countries that were more (less) economically advanced in 1500 became poorer (richer, respectively) by the late 20th century. Using data on place of origin of today's country populations and the urbanization and population density measures used by Acemoglu et...

This paper exploits the dual accounting technique to uncover multi-factor productivity growth patterns for goods and services across US states from 1980 to 2007. Due to changes in sectoral classifications, the period is divided into two parts, 1980-1997 and 1998-2007. Over both periods, states...

Using data on place of origin of today's country populations and the indicators of level of development in 1500 used by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2002), we confirm a reversal of fortune for colonized countries as territories, but find persistence of fortune for people and their...

Despite being located within a well integrated economy such as the US, its states exhibit considerable heterogeneity, both in the composition of output and in sectoral labor productivity growth. In this paper, we examine the sources of uneven labor productivity growth across sectors in US...