This paper studies the effectiveness of government-backed credit guarantees to the infrastructure sector, a policy tool adopted by a range of countries during recessions. We propose a two-sector model with financial intermediary frictions so that infrastructure producers rely on bank loans to...

We study the welfare properties of an economy where both monetary and fiscal policy follow simple rules, and where a subset of agents is borrowing constrained. The optimized fiscal rule is far more aggressive than automatic stabilizers, and stabilizes the income of borrowing constrained agents,...

The paper explores the macroeconomic consequences of fiscal consolidations whose timing and composition are uncertain. Drawing on the evidence in Alesina and Ardagna (2010), we emphasize whether or not the fiscal consolidation is driven by tax rises or expenditure cuts. We find that the...

The authors study the implications of fiscal policy behaviour for sovereign risk in a framework that determines a country's fiscal limit, the point at which, for economic or political reasons, taxes and spending can no longer adjust to stabilize debt. A real business cycle model maps the...

We study the welfare properties of an economy where both monetary and fiscal policy follow simple rules, and where a subset of agents is borrowing constrained. The optimized fiscal rule is far more aggressive than automatic stabilizers, and stabilizes the income of borrowingconstrained agents,...