This paper asks whether tax cycles can represent the optimal policy in a model without any extrinsic uncertainty. I show, in an economy without capital and where labor is the only choicevariable (a Lucas-Stokey economy), that a large class of preferences exists, where cycles are optimal, as well...

This paper analyzes the e¤ectiveness of the tax and transfer systemsin the European Union and the US to act as an automatic stabilizer in the currenteconomic crisis. We …nd that automatic stabilizers absorb 38 per cent of a propor-tional income shock in the EU, compared to 32 per cent in the...

The Bulgarian monetary system was established, immediately after independence.Having experienced it already under Ottoman rule, newly independent Bulgaria adopted thebimetallic standard. Without being a member of the Latin Monetary Union, it tried broadlyto follow the principles of the...

This paper investigates to what extent the tax and transfer systems in Europe protecthouseholds at different income levels against losses in current income caused by economicdownturns like the present financial crisis. We use a multi country micro simulation model toanalyse how shocks on market...

The tug-o-war for supremacy between inflation targeting and monetary tar-geting is a classic yet timely topic in monetary economics. In this paper, werevisit this question within the context of a pure-exchange overlapping genera-tions model of money where spatial separation and random relocation...

In an overlapping generations model, momentary equilibria are defined as points that lieon the intergenerational offer curve, i.e., they satisfy agents’ optimality conditions and marketclearing at any date. However, some dynamic sequences commencing from such points may notbe considered valid...

In this paper, we study a decentralized monetary economy witha speci…ed set of markets, rules of trade, an equilibrium concept, and a restricted setof policies and derive a set of equilibrium (monetary) allocations generated by thesepolicies. Next we set up a simpler constrained planning...

Faced with real and nominal shocks, what should a benevolent central bankdo, …x the money growth rate or target the inflation rate? In this paper, wemake a …rst attempt at studying the optimal choice of monetary policy in-struments in a micro-founded model of money. Speci…cally, we produce...

In models of money with an infinitely-lived representative agent (ILRA models), the optimal monetary policyis almost always the Friedman rule. Overlapping generations (OG) models are different: in this paper, westudy how they are different, and why. We investigate the welfare properties of...

This paper represents a first attempt at a tractable analysis of how monetary policy influences the income distribution in an economy. It presents a monetary growth model in which inflation affects credit market efficiency, and via this link, influences capital accumulation, and the income...