All Courts rule ex-post, after most economic decisions are sunk. This can generate a time-inconsistency problem. From an ex-ante perspective, Courts will have the ex-post temptation to be excessively lenient. This observation is at the root of the rule of precedent, known as stare decisis. <P>...</p>

In DSGE models, fiscal policy is typically described by simple rules in which tax rates respond to the level of output. We show that there is only weak empirical evidence in favor of such specifications in U.S. data. Instead, the cyclical movements of labor and capital income tax rates are...

Despite the widespread belief that technology shocks are the main source of business fluctuations, recent empirical studies indicate that in the absence of financial frictions, a shock to the marginal efficiency of investment is the main source and is closely related to financial conditions for...

An important determinant of informality in a country is its tax enforcement capacity, which some authors argue further distorts the decisions of firms and creates inefficiency. In this paper, I assess the quantitative effect of incomplete tax enforcement on aggregate output and productivity...

Propagation in equilibrium models of search unemployment is altered when vacancy costs require some external financing on frictional credit markets. The easing of financing constraints during an expansion as firms accumulate net worth reduces the opportunity cost for resources allocated to job...

This paper presents and estimates a dynamic model of multinational production (MP) and exports with heterogeneous firms. The model highlights the interaction between firms' location and export decisions and their effect on aggregate productivity. The model is structurally estimated using...

This paper studies a dynamic Markovian game of two infinitely-lived altruistic agents without commitment. Players can save, consume and give transfers to each other. We identify a continuum of equilibria in which imperfectly-altruistic agents act as if they were a perfectly-altruistic dynasty...

There are several models of outside money in which some inflation accomplished through lump-sum transfers is optimal. It is shown here that inflation can be optimal in a model of inside money, essentially the model in Cavalcanti-Wallace (1999). The possibility of inflation comes about via the...