Fiscal Policy Rules in an Overlapping Generations Model with Endogenous Labour Supply

A fiscal policy rule in which taxation is a function of existing government debt (a "wealth-tax") is usually believed to be effective in providing stability. Using a dicrete-time version of Blanchard's overlapping generations model, extended to include money and an endogenous labour supply we show that, contrary to the intuition, a wealth tax might not be enough to ensure the existence of a unique, well defined, saddle-path equilibrium. We suggest that a government willing to run a positive and sustainable level of debt could use an alternative financing rule, imposing an additional tax component, that is a function of the difference between the real interest rate and the tax rate on wealth.