In this paper, we assume away standard distributional and static-efficiency arguments for public health, and instead, seek a dynamic efficiency rationale. We study a lifecycle model wherein young agents make health investments to reduce mortality risk. We identify a welfare rationale for public...

A classic result in dynamic public economics states that there is no welfare rationale for pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pensions in a dynamically-efficient neoclassical economy with exogenous labor supply. Parenthetically, a welfare justification for PAYG pensions exists if the economy is dynamically...

In this article Joydeep Bhattacharya and Joseph Haslag explore the effect of fiscal policy actions on long-run prices and the inflation rate. They study a model economy in which the central bank is not independent. Indeed, the government explicitly relies on the central bank for a predetermined...

We investigate sunspot equilibria in a static, one-commodity model with taxes and transfers denominated in money units. Volatility in this economy is purely monetary, since the only uncertainty is about the price level. We construct simple, robust examples of sunspot equilibria that are not mere...

In recent years, many countries have experienced a significant shift in demographic patterns towards the elderly. This phenomenon poses numerous challenges for the design of public pension programs and labor market policies. To better understand how public policy should be designed in response...

Rejuveniles are "grown-ups who cultivate juvenile tastes in products and entertainment". In this note, we study a standard AK growth model of overlapping generations populated by rejuveniles. For our purposes, rejuveniles are old agents who derive utility from "keeping up" their consumption with...

We study several popular monetary models which generate a non-degenerate stationary distribution of money holdings. Across these environments, our principal finding is as follows: a monetary policy that sets long run nominal interest rates to zero (the Friedman rule) does not typically maximize...

This paper introduces endogenous longevity in an otherwise standard overlapping generations model with capital. In the model, a young agent may increase the length of her old age by incurring investments in health funded from her wage income. Such private health investments are assumed to be...

Using a pure-exchange overlapping generations model in which money is valued because of a legal restriction, we show the following: a) a benevolent government may make some use of the inflation tax in conjunction with a lump-sum tax on the young but not if lump-sum taxes on the old are...

This paper takes a discrete-time adaptation of the continuous−time matching economy described in Pissarides (1990, 2000), and computes the solution to the dynamic planning problem. The solution is shown to be completely characterized by a first−order, non−linear map. We show that the map...