NBER Publications by Ilian Mihov

The paper provides and empirical characterization of fiscal policy in the euro area and in a group of twenty-two OECD economies over the period from 1970 until 2007. Using the cyclically-adjusted fiscal balance we document that policy in the euro area has been mildly pro-cyclical. The adoption of the common currency and the constraints imposed by the Stability and Growth Pact have not had a large impact on the cyclical behavior of the structural balance. In contrast, over the past ten years US fiscal policy has become highly countercyclical, which was due predominantly to discretionary changes in tax policies. However, the component of the budget due to automatic stabilizers reacts stronger in the euro-area countries than in the US. We also document the primary balance in the OECD economie...

This paper disentangles fluctuations in disaggregated prices due to macroeconomic and sectoral conditions using a factor-augmented vector autoregression estimated on a large data set. On the basis of this estimation, we establish eight facts: (1) Macroeconomic shocks explain only about 15% of sectoral inflation fluctuations; (2) The persistence of sectoral inflation is driven by macroeconomic factors; (3) While disaggregated prices respond quickly to sector-specific shocks, their responses to aggregate shocks are small on impact and larger thereafter; (4) Most prices respond with a significant delay to identified monetary policy shocks, and show little evidence of a "price puzzle," contrary to existing studies based on traditional VARs; (5) Categories in which consumer prices fall the most...