In the early 1970s, hours worked per working-age person in Spain were higher than in the United States. Starting in 1975, however, hours worked in Spain fell by 40%. We find that 80% of the decline in hours worked can be accounted for by the evolution of taxes in an otherwise standard...

How are the welfare costs from monopoly distributed across U.S. households? We answer this question for the U.S. credit card industry, which is highly concentrated, charges interest rates that are 3.4 to 8.8 percentage points above perfectly competitive pricing, and has repeatedly lost antitrust...

We analyze a general equilibrium model of firm dynamics to study the effects of shocks to productivity, labor wedge, and collateral constraint (credit shock) on firm exit. We find that only the credit shock increases firm exit. This result is robust to the magnitude of shocks and different model...

We analyze shocks to productivity, collateral constraint (credit shock), firm operation, and labor disutility in a model of firm dynamics with entry and exit. Shocks to firm operation and labor disutility capture COVID-19 lockdowns. Compared to the productivity shock, the credit and the lockdown...

This paper studies the role of intangible capital investment in the timing of optimal capital income tax reforms. Within an infinitely lived worker-capitalist model as in Judd (J Public Econ 28:59-83, 1985), we consider two different economies: one in which capitalists devote physical...

We examine the optimal policy response to an exogenously given demographic shock. Such a shock affects negatively the financing of retirement pensions, and we use optimal fiscal policy in order to determine the optimal strategy of the social security administration. Our approach provides...

This paper computes the optimal progressivity of the income tax code in a dynamic general equilibrium model with household heterogeneity in which uninsurable labor productivity risk gives rise to a nontrivial income and wealth distribution. A progressive tax system serves as a partial substitute...

In this paper we quantitatively characterize the optimal capital and labor income tax in an overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic, uninsurable income shocks, where households also differ permanently with respect to their ability to generate income. The welfare criterion we employ is...

We develop a sovereign default model with debt renegotiation in which interest-rate shocks affect default incentives through two mechanisms. The first is the standard mechanism through which higher rates tighten the budget constraint. The second rests on how risk-free rates affect lenders'...