This short paper reconsiders the popular result that the lower the probability of getting reelected, the stronger the incumbent politicians' incentive to follow short-sighted, inefficient policies. The set-up is a general equilibrium model of endogenous growth and optimal fiscal policy, in which...

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional implications of Markov-perfect tax-spending policy in a neoclassical growth model with capitalists and workers. Focusing on the long run, our main findings are: (i) it is optimal for a benevolent government, which cares equally about its...

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...

We reconsider the conventional wisdom that, in the presence of public goods and distortionary taxation, Nash tax rates are inefficiently low due to free riding. We use a model in which the public good is natural resources. Specifically, a general equilibrium model of a world economy, in which...

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional implications of Markov-perfect taxspending policy in a neoclassical growth model with capitalists and workers. Focusing on the long run, our main findings are: (i) it is optimal for a benevolent government, which cares equally about its...