We study banks' optimal equity buffer in general equilibrium and their response to under-capitalization. Making progress towards a "pecking order theory" for private recapitalizations, our benchmark model identifies equity issuance as individually and socially optimal, compared to deleveraging,...

We study banks' optimal equity buffer in general equilibrium and their response to under-capitalization. Making progress towards a "pecking order theory" for private recapitalizations, our benchmark model identifies equity issuance as individually and socially optimal, compared to deleveraging,...

We study a dynamic general equilibrium model in which firms choose their investment level and their capital structure, trading off the tax advantages of debt against the risk of costly default. The costs of bankruptcy are endogenously determined, as bankrupt firms are forced to liquidate their...

We study the dynamic Ramsey problem of finding optimal public debt and linear taxes on capital and labor income within a tractable infinite horizon model with incomplete markets. With zero public expenditure and debt, it is optimal to tax the risky labor income and subsidize capital, while a...

We study the dynamic Ramsey problem of finding optimal public debt and linear taxes on capital and labor income within a tractable infinite horizon model with incomplete markets. With zero public expenditure and debt, it is optimal to tax the risky labor income and subsidize capital, while a...

We study the dynamic Ramsey problem of finding optimal public debt and linear taxes on capital and labor income within a tractable infinite horizon model with incomplete markets. With zero public expenditure and debt, it is optimal to tax the risky labor income and subsidize capital, while a...

How should capital and labor be taxed when individuals' labor income is subject to unin- surable idiosyncratic risks? To address this question, we develop a tractable infinite horizon model with incomplete markets and consider a dynamic optimal taxation problem with linear taxes on the wage and...