This paper studies the design of optimal fiscal policy when a government that fully trusts the probability model of government expenditures faces a fearful public that forms pessimistic expectations. We identify two forces that shape our results. On the one hand, the government has an incentive...

We study optimal time-consistent distortionary taxation when the repayment of government debt is not enforceable. The government taxes labor income or issues noncontingent debt in order to finance an exogenous stream of stochastic government expenditures. The government can repudiate its debt...

How should public debt be managed when uncertainty about the business cycle is widespread and debt levels are high, as in the aftermath of the last financial crisis? This paper analyzes optimal fiscal policy with ambiguity aversion and endogenous government spending. We show that, without...

This paper analyzes optimal policy in setups where both the leader and the follower have doubts about the probability model of uncertainty. I illustrate the methodology in two environments: a) an industry populated with a large firm and many small firms in a competitive fringe, where both types...

I study optimal capital and labor income taxation in a business cycle model with the recursive preferences of Epstein and Zin (1989) and Weil (1990). In contrast to the case of time-additive expected utility, I find that it is no longer optimal to make the welfare cost of distortionary taxes...