Despite the expansion of empirical research in public finance, there remains consider- able uncertainty about the distributional consequences of fiscal policy. For this session, I have been asked to summarize some international comparisons. I shall divide the issue into two questions. How...

"This paper uses a model with a continuum of equilibrium unemployment rates to explore the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The existence of multiple steady state unemployment rates is explained by the absence of markets for the inputs to a search technology for matching unemployed workers with...

This paper uses the old-Keynesian representative agent model developed in Farmer (2010b) to answer two questions: 1) do increased government purchases crowd out private consumption? 2) do increased government purchases reduce unemployment? Farmer compared permanent tax financed expenditure paths...

This paper uses a model with a continuum of equilibrium steady state unemployment rates to explore the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The existence of multiple steady state equilibria is explained by the presence of search and recruiting costs. I use the model to explain the current financial...

We demonstrate that the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) cannot be used to determine the price level uniquely in the overlapping generations (OLG) model. We provide two examples of OLG models, one with three 3-period lives and one with 62-period lives. Both examples are calibrated to an...