We study optimal tax policies in a life-cycle economy with risky human capital and permanent ability differences. The optimal policies balance redistribution across agents, insurance against human capital shocks, and incentives to learn and work. In the optimum, i) if utility is separable in...

The Nelder-Mead simplex method is an optimization routine that works well with irregular objective functions. For a function of n parameters, it compares the objective function at the n 1 vertices of a simplex and updates the worst vertex through simplex search steps. However, a standard serial...

We study why capital accumulation in Argentina was slow in the 1990s and 2000s, despite high productivity growth and low international interest rates. We show that limited commitment constraints introduce two mechanisms. First, the response of investment to a total factor productivity increase...