Essays on redistributive fiscal policies and macroeconomics

This thesis consists of three chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 study redistributive fiscal policies. Chapter 3 analyzes the role of asymmetric information in frictional labor markets. Fiscal stimulus during the Great Recession consisted mainly of transfers, rather than government purchases. Chapter 1 analyzes the role of marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) in shaping the effect of such policies. I construct a continuous-time New Keynesian model with heterogeneous overlapping generations which allows for arbitrary MPC heterogeneity. I characterize the output multipliers of fiscal transfers, and show that the role of MPCs is mainly to determine the timing of the fiscal stimulus. The relation between this timing and the cumulative effect on output is, however, ambiguous. Indeed, I show that transfers to low-MPC consumers may generate a higher cumulative effect on output.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Spector, Mariano Eduardo.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Iván Werning and Daron Acemoglu.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/127037

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/127037