Over the period 1972-1986, the correlations of GDP, employment and investment between the United States and an aggregate of Europe, Canada and Japan were respectively 0.76, 0.66, and 0.63. For the period 1986 to 2000 the same correlations were much lower: 0.26, 0.03, and -0.07 (real...

We analyze the role of fiscal policy in the recent slowdown in Japan. A dynamic general equilibrium model is developed in which fiscal policy can have both expansionary effects (through increasing returns) and contractionary effects (through the increase of public debt and tax burden).

We explore steady-state inequality in an intergenerational model with altruistically linked individuals who experience privately observed taste shocks. When the welfare function depends only on the initial generation, efficiency requires immiseration: inequality grows without bound and...

Abstract We provide a unifying foundation for monetary policy and macroprudential policies in financial markets for economies with nominal rigidities in goods and labor markets and constraints on monetary policy such as the zero lower bound or fixed exchange rates. Macroprudential interventions...

This paper builds a continuous time model of government saving behavior. The model features rulers that rotate out of power. The ruler makes two decisions: a. total spending expenditure; and b. the composition of spending between two goods, one with public benefits and another with private...

efficiency gains can be sizable, but we find that most of the improvements can then attributed to the relaxation of borrowing constraints, rather than the introduction of savings distortions.

We study the effects of labor mobility within a currency union suffering from nominal rigidities. When the demand shortfall in depressed region is mostly internal, migration may not help regional macroeconomic adjustment. When external demand is also at the root of the problem, migration out of...

We develop a theory of optimal estate taxation in a model where bequest inequality is driven by differences in parental altruism. We show that a wide range of results are possible, from positive taxes to subsidies, depending on redistributive objectives implicit in the cardinal specification of...

We study the effects of labor mobility within a currency union suffering from nominal rigidities. When the demand shortfall in depressed region is mostly internal, migration may not help regional macroeconomic adjustment. When external demand is also at the root of the problem, migration out of...