Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program on Long-Term Fiscal Policy

The NBER, with the generous support of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, is accepting applications for a one-year post-doctoral fellowship program on long-term fiscal policy. This fellowship program will enable up to two outstanding early-career economists to visit the NBER’s Cambridge office for one year of intensive research.

The subject matter of research may be any aspect of long-term fiscal policy, including but not limited to:

• Analysis of how the level of government debt affects economic growth and of the feedback loops between the debt-to-GDP ratio and the growth rate of spending and taxes.
• Investigation of the role of reforms to entitlement spending, other government programs, and tax reform in addressing long-run structural deficits in the U.S or other nations.
• Exploration of the links between tax policy and economic growth, with particular emphasis on the way different tax instruments impact an economy’s long-term growth.
• Research on the fiscal consequences of an aging population, including the effect of changing age mix on the level and composition of government spending, on the domestic demand for government debt, and on labor markets.
• Study of fiscal institutions and fiscal rules to learn whether certain institutional structures, such as balanced-budget rules, are associated with lower structural deficits.
• Consideration of the interplay between federal and state fiscal policy in the United States and the role of intergovernmental transfers of revenue authority and program responsibility in affecting measured federal or state fiscal positions.