A key issue in current research and policy is the size of fiscal multipliers when the economy is in recession. We provide three insights. First, using regime-switching models, we find large differences in the size of spending multipliers in recessions and expansions with fiscal policy being...

This paper considers implications of population aging for the conduct of fiscal policy, grouping the issues into four areas, focusing on the impact of aging on: (1) the size of government budget imbalances; (2) the composition of government spending and government budget flexibility; (3) the...

This paper provides an evaluation of the long-term fiscal sustainability of advanced economies, based on current estimates of these economies’ current-policy fiscal trajectories. As will be quite evident, for many countries short-term fiscal measures, such as the debt-GDP ratio and the...

This paper provides an evaluation of the long-term fiscal sustainability of advanced economies, based on current estimates of these economies’ current-policy fiscal trajectories. As will be quite evident, for many countries short-term fiscal measures, such as the debt-GDP ratio and the...

Za većinu posmatrača trenutna recesija kreira neodoljive okolnosti za obnavljanje aktivizma fiskalne politike. Ali, snažna podrška diskrecionoj fiskalnoj politici predstavlja odraz obnovljenog poverenja prema aktivnijoj ekonomskoj politici koje je postojalo i pre sadašnje krize. Medjutim,...

During and after the "Great Recession" that began in December 2007, the U.S. federal government enacted several rounds of activist fiscal policy. In this paper, we review the recent evolution of thinking and evidence regarding the effectiveness of activist fiscal policy. Although fiscal...

For a large number of OECD countries we estimate the cross-country spillover effects of government purchases on output. Following the methodology in Auerbach and Gorodnichenko (2012a, b), we allow these multipliers to vary smoothly according to the state of the economy and use real-time forecast...

The published version of our paper had an accounting mistake in the construction of one time series. This note describes the mistake and presents results based on corrected data. The revised results are very similar to those originally reported.

This paper illustrates the technique of generational accounting, a new way to evaluate fiscal policy that overcomes the inherent ambiguities of traditional deficit accounting. The authors illustrate why there is no 'correct' measure of the deficit and how generational accounting--estimating the...