The optimality of tax smoothing is reexamined using frictional labor markets. In a calibrated matching model that generates empirically relevant labor market fluctuations conditional on exogenous fiscal policy, the Ramsey-optimal policy calls for extreme labor tax rate volatility. Purposeful tax...

We determine the optimal degree of price inflation volatility when nominal wages are sticky and the government uses state-contingent inflation to finance government spending. We address this question in a well-understood Ramsey model of fiscal and monetary policy, in which the benevolent planner...

I construct a general, multi-good model of consumption externalities that allows for relative jealousies and relative keeping-up-with-the-Joneses effects. These relative social consumption contexts have the ability to reinforce or mitigate each other.

Costly nominal wage adjustment has received renewed attention in the design of optimal policy. In this paper, we embed costly nominal wage adjustment into the modern theory of frictional labor markets to study optimal fiscal and monetary policy. The main result is that the optimal rate of price...

We study Ramsey-optimal fiscal policy in an economy in which product varieties are the result of forward-looking investment decisions by firms. There are two main results. First, depending on the particular form of variety aggregation in preferences, firms' dividend payments may be either...

We study optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an environment where explicit frictions give rise to valued money, making money essential in the sense that it expands the set of feasible trades. The two main results are that the Friedman Rule is typically not optimal, and the long-run capital...

We study the role of agency frictions and costly external finance in cyclical labor market dynamics, with a focus on how credit-market frictions may amplify aggregate TFP shocks. The main result is that aggregate TFP shocks lead to large fluctuations of labor market quantities if the model is...