This dissertation presents a series of three essays that examine the functional form of the U. S. federal income tax and its implications. In the first essay we introduce the convex functional form of the income tax which we believe is superior to the standard income-proportional form. We also...

This paper studies the impact of Higher Order Belief shocks, representing shifts in agents' beliefs about others' beliefs, on macroeconomic outcomes. The dynamic causal effects of these shocks are identified by leveraging a combination of a proxy-VAR approach and DSGEbased instruments. Our...

This paper analyzes Germany’s unusual labor market experience during the Great Recession. We estimate a general equilibrium model with a detailed labor market block for post-unification Germany. This allows us to disentangle the role of institutions (short-time work, government spending rules)...

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced a global health and economic crisis. The entire world has faced a trade-off between health and recessionary effects. This paper investigates this trade-off according to a macro-dynamic perspective. We set up and simulate a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium...