Ramey (2011a) and others argue that increases in government spending associated with wars and military build-ups constitute a good instrument for measuring the macroeconomic effects of fiscal shocks. We argue that this instrument has two important drawbacks: the composition of government...

Ramey (2011a) and others argue that increases in government spending associated with wars and military build-ups constitute a good instrument for measuring the macroeconomic effects of fiscal shocks. We argue that this instrument has two important drawbacks: the composition of government...

The aim of the article is to quantify and compare the macroeconomic effects of defence spending in the Polish and German economies. Estimating these effects is of particular importance in the context of the substantial increase in defence expenditures in Poland and Germany resulting from the war...

This paper revisits the empirical analysis of Nakamura and Steinsson (2014). I reconstruct and extend the original dataset to cover the period 1966-2019, harmonizing two major sources of data: the Defense Contract Action Data System (DCADS) and USAspending.gov. I discuss how to aggregate these...

Set identification in Bayesian vector autoregression (VARs) is becoming increasingly popular while facing recent criticism about potentially unwanted prior dominance and underrepresented bounds of the identified set. This can lead to biased inference even in large samples. Common estimation...

Since 2003 American political leaders and lawmakers have been committed to the simultaneous pursuit of tax cuts and military excursions abroad. Just a few decades ago, when military hawks were also deficit hawks, such a position would have seemed incongruous. This essay reviews, War and Taxes, a...

The French Wars (1793-1815) exerted unprecedented pressures on Britain's fiscal and monetary policy settings. Policy makers had to constantly adjust the policy mix as events unfolded. This meant implementing monetary and fiscal policy innovations, such as the suspension of the gold standard and...