We investigate the effects of government spending on U.S. output with a threshold structural vector autoregressive model. We consider Bayesian model comparison and generalized impulse response analysis to test for nonlinearities in the responses of output to government spending. Our empirical...

We propose an approach to estimating structural models in which the central bank holds the policy rate fixed for an extended period of the estimation sample. Embedding this policy in a version of the Smets and Wouters (2007) model that incorporates information from the yield curve to help with...

We investigate the effects of discretionary changes in government spending and taxes using a medium-scale nonlinear vector autoregressive model with policy shocks identified via sign restrictions. Tax cuts and spending increases have larger stimulative effects when there is excess slack in the...