Changes in fiscal policy typically entail two kinds of lags: the legislative lag--between when legislation is proposed and when it is signed into law--and the implementation lag--from when a new fiscal law is enacted and when it takes effect. These lags imply that substantial time evolves...

Legislative and implementation lags imply that substantial time evolves between when news arrives about fiscal changes and when the changes actually take place -- time when households and firms can adjust their behavior. We identify two types of fiscal news -- government spending using the...

"It is well known that augmenting a standard linear regression model with variables that are correlated with the error term but uncorrelated with the original regressors will increase asymptotic efficiency of the original coefficients. We argue that in the context of predicting excess returns,...