Using a heterogeneous agent model allowing for different degrees of complementarity between capital, skilled and unskilled labour, this paper evaluates supply-side reforms consistent with lower public debt-to-GDP in the long-run. We find that, relative to the other tax reforms, capital tax cuts...

In this paper, we quantitatively assess the welfare implications of alternative public education spending rules. To this end, we employ a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which human capital externalities and public education expenditures, financed by distorting taxes, enhance the...

In this paper, we study a two-country dynamic setup with environmental externalities and potential model misspecification in relation to this public good. Under model uncertainty, robust policies help to correct the inefficiencies associated with free riding on public good provision, implying...

In this paper we study the quantitative macroeconomic effects of public education spending in USA for the post-war period. Using comparable measures of human and physical capital, from Jorgenson and Fraumeni (1989, 1992a,b), we calibrate a standard dynamic general equilibrium model where human...

It is known that anti-social redistributive activities (rent seeking, tax evasion, corruption, violation of property rights, delay of socially beneficial reforms, etc) hurt the macroeconomy. But it is less known what is the role of government size as a determinant of such activities. We use data...

This paper incorporates an uncoordinated struggle for extra fiscal favors into an otherwise standard Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model. This reflects the popular belief that interest groups compete for privileged transfers and tax treatment at the expense of the general public...

The stylized facts suggest a negative relationship between tax progressivity and the skill premium from the early 1960s until the early 1990s, and a positive one thereafter. They also generally imply rising tax progressivity, except for the 1980s. In this paper, we ask whether optimal tax policy...

In this paper we examine the importance of imperfect competition in product and labour markets in determining the long-run welfare effects of tax reforms assuming agent heterogeneity in capital holdings. Each of these market failures, independently, results in welfare losses for at least a...

We study the importance of uncertainty and public finance to the welfare ranking of three environmental policy instruments: pollution taxes, pollution permits and Kyoto-like numerical rules for emissions. The setup is the basic stochastic neoclassical growth model augmented with the assumptions...

Robust decision making implies welfare costs or robustness premia when the approximating model is the true data generating process. To examine the importance of these premia at the aggregate level we employ a simple two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model with human capital and introduce an...