This paper attempts to analyze the role of taxes on property in containing asset bubbles and its consequent recessionary impact, by developing a framework, wherein the housing market is conceived as consisting of several sub-markets i.e. rental housing market, house resale market, new...

One of the most progressive and innovative approaches to public investment financing is known as value capture. Value-capture envisions creation of the policy tools to adequately capture the privately accruing changes in the value of sites and/or consumption that arise from public infrastructure...

Are budget deficits bad for an economy? This question has perplexed economists for centuries. Essentially, there are three schools of thought on this matter. One school takes the position that deficits have adverse influence on inflation, interest rates and private investment. Also, as yearly...

Most party systems have seen a considerable rise in polarization during the past decades. We show that fiscal policies have contributed to this development. Our macro-level analysis of 166 elections since 1980 finds that austerity increases both electoral abstention and votes for non-mainstream...

We examine the relationship between public sector efficiency and government spending, to assess public resource management across the 27 European Union countries. Specifically, we analyze the growth of public expenditure in relation to outcomes across various public sector performance (PSP)...

Defense spending accounts for a larger share of national output in most countries than many of the other allocative decisions, both public and private, which the majority of economic research aims at explaining. Yet with notable exceptions, most economists have ignored this topic and relegated...

This article analyzes the two-stage problem a country faces in first choosing the optimal amount of arms to acquire and then deciding whether it can improve upon the allocation that emerges after the first stage by engaging in a military conflict. A model is introduced based on the concept of...

We analyze the effects of world wars on the macroeconomic dynamics of the U.S., France, Germany, and the UK, by means of an estimated open-economy model. The model allows wars to affect the economy through capital depreciation, sovereign default, a military draft, household preferences, and...

In this paper, we estimate the effect of defense spending on the U.S. macroeconomy since World War II. First, we construct a new panel dataset of state-level federal defense contracts. Second, we sum observations across states and, using the resulting time series, estimate the aggregate effect...

Do local fiscal multipliers depend on what the government purchases? We find that government purchases of services have larger effects on employment than spending on goods. Industries producing services are more labor-intensive than industries producing goods. This heterogeneity in labor...