This paper develops a general framework to analyze the welfare consequences of monetary and fiscal shocks in an open economy, focusing on the role of the degree of substitutability between goods produced in different countries. We find that an expansionary shock that would be beneficial in a...

Eliminating the federal budget deficit, even assuming a correspondingly higher national rate, is likely to yield only a modest reduction in the U.S. international trade deficit. Balancing the federal budget will help improve the trade balance through the effects of lower levels of aggregate...

We document aggregate income growth uncertainty at the state level, and the extent to which this uncertainty is reduced by risksharing through financial markets and federal fiscal policy. A methodology is adopted that is closely connected to the empirical growth literature. It does not rely on...

In this paper, we study the question whether suburbs should help finance the core public services of their central cities. We review three arguments that have been offered in favor of suburbs' fiscal assistance to their central cities. First, the central city provides public services that...

This paper investigates the consequences of debt stabilization for inflation targeting. If the monetary authority perfectly stabilizes inflation while the fiscal authority holds constant the real value of debt at maturity, the equilibrium dynamics might be indeterminate. However, determinacy can...

This article demonstrates that a fiscal expansion can induce both a short- and long-run depreciation of a currency and, by parallel arguments, fiscal contraction can induce short- and long-run appreciation. This possibility hinges on a country being a debtor with at least some of its debt...