This paper presents a two-party model of fiscal and debt policy in which the parties do not care about policy outcomes when out of office. Unlike other models of this type, the authors' model has predictions that are largely consistent with existing empirical findings about partisan and...

We reexamine the properties of optimal fiscal policy and their implications for implementable capital accumulation. The setup is a standard endogenous growth model with public production services, augmented by elastic labor supply. We show that, when a benevolent government chooses a distorting...

This paper studies the properties of second-best optimal policy in a standard general equilibrium model of growth augmented with renewable natural resources. The government chooses its policy instruments (the income tax rate and the allocation of collected tax revenues between public investment...

This paper shows that whether pollution occurs as a by-product of economic activity (which is supposed to be the case in DCs), or as resource extraction (which is supposed to be the case in LDCs), matters for the dynamics of the optimal growth-environment-policy link. The context is a dynamic...

This paper searches for a general equilibrium model of optimal growth and endogenous fiscal policy with the aim of explaining the interaction between private agents and fiscal authorities in the U.S., West Germany, Japan and the U.K. over the period 1960-1996. Our search is conducted in the...

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model with three distinct social groups, capitalists, private workers and public employees. After solving for the status quo equilibrium, which can mimic the advantages of employment in the public sector in most EU countries, the paper looks for...

We study optimized monetary and fiscal feedback policy rules. The setup is a conventional New Keynesian DSGE model calibrated to match data from the euro area. Our aim is to welfare rank alternative tax-spending policy instruments used for shock stabilization and/or debt consolidation when, at...

We study the differences between public production and public finance of public goods in a dynamic general equilibrium model. Under public production, public goods are produced by the government. Under public finance, the same amount of public goods is produced by cost-minimizing private...

In this paper, we study the aggregate and distributional implications of a smaller public sector in the euro area. By a smaller public sector, we mean a reduction in public debt and/or cuts in public spending, when such changes in fiscal policy are accommodated by adjustment in various taxes....