This chapter reviews and synthesizes our current understanding of the shocks that drive
economic fluctuations. The chapter begins with an illustration of the problem of identifying …

There is growing awareness within the economics profession of the important role narratives
play in the economy. Even though empirical approaches that try to quantify economic …

This paper takes stock of what we have learned from the “Renaissance” in fiscal research in
the ten years since the financial crisis. I first discuss the new innovations in methodology and …

The term “austerity” indicates a policy of sizeable reduction of govern-ment deficits and
stabilization of government debt achieved by means of spending cuts or tax increases, or …

Uncertainty about the future rises in recessions. But is uncertainty a source of business
cycles or an endogenous response to them, and does the type of uncertainty matter? We …

This article studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United
States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patented …

We study people's subjective models of the macroeconomy and shed light on their
attentional foundations. To do so, we measure beliefs about the effects of macroeconomic …

This paper estimates the dynamic effects of changes in taxes in the United States. We
distinguish between changes in personal and corporate income taxes and develop a new …

Using census microdata on multistate firms and their organizational forms, we estimate the
impact of state taxes on business activity. For C corporations, employment and the number …

Abstract After the Global Financial Crisis, a controversial rush to fiscal austerity followed in
many countries. Yet research on the effects of austerity on macroeconomic aggregates was …