We propose a social choice rule for aggregating preferences elicited from surveys into a marginal adjustment of policy from the status quo. The mechanism is: (i) symmetric in its treatment of survey respondents; (ii) ordinal, using only the orientation of respondents' indifference surfaces;...

We propose a social choice rule for aggregating preferences elicited from surveys into a marginal adjustment of policy from the status quo. The mechanism is: (i) symmetric in its treatment of survey respondents; (ii) ordinal, using only the orientation of respondents' indifference surfaces;...

The experience of the Great Recession and its aftermath revealed that a lower bound on interest rates can be a serious obstacle for fighting recessions. However, the zero lower bound is not a law of nature; it is a policy choice. The central message of this paper is that with readily available...

In the United States, massive fiscal expansion during the pandemic protected households and helped to return output and unemployment nearly to pre-pandemic expectations by the end of 2021—a sharp contrast with the slow recovery from the previous US recession. The authors document that many...

Official estimates of the budgetary effects of proposed federal legislation generally exclude behavioral responses that would have macroeconomic effects. In my view, including such effects — an approach known as “dynamic scoring” — in estimates for certain proposals would improve the...