NBER Publications by Robert Johnson

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 had one aspect that is unusually useful for economic analysis. It provided an example of a clear-cut announcement of future policy actions at specified dates.This provides an opportunity to apply recent advances in the analysis of expectations dynamics to data that have been generated in an environment that includes such announced and anticipated policy action. A three-stage future tax cut was announced in the Tax Bill in March 1981. In a Keynesian model with liquidity-constrained consumers or investors, or with uncertainity, this would normally be expected to provide a stimulus to the economy when the tax cuts actually appear. But the financial markets could look ahead to the stimulus and the shift in the high-employment deficit brought about by the t...