Even as Congressional leaders and the president discuss a potential temporary solution to the current stalemate over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling, the repeated cycle of lurching from crisis to crisis has significant and real costs to the U.S. economy.

A new report, prepared by Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, examines the cost of crisis-driven fiscal policy over the past few years by looking at indicators including GDP growth, the unemployment rate and the corporate credit spread. The paper considers recent policy and political battles including the sequester, the government shutdown and brinksmanship on the debt ceiling.