The paper derives conditions for ex ante efficient intergenerational risk sharing in overlapping generations models. I show how the efficiency of a fiscal policy can be evaluated without distributional judgments, I derive efficiency conditions, and then examine specific models. For models with...

Tradable permits are now widely used to control pollution. We investigate the implications of setting up such a system in another field -- population control --, either domestically or at the global level. We first generalize the framework with both tradable procreation allowances and tradable...

In this paper we study optimal taxation in a dynamic game played by a sequence of governments, one for each time period, and a private sector composed of a continuum of households. We focus on the Markov-perfect equilibrium of this game under two assumptions on the extent of government's...

This paper studies the optimal trade-off between commitment and flexibility in an intertemporal consumption/savings choice model. Individuals expect to receive relevant information regarding their own situation and tastes - generating a value for flexibility - but also expect to suffer from...

We study how the use of judgement or add-factors in macroeconomic forecasting may disturb the set of equilibrium outcomes when agents learn using recursive methods. We isolate conditions under which "exuberance equilibria" exist in standard macroeconomic environments. These equilibria may...

This paper develops a political economy model to evaluate how inequality affects policies via the political process. The model is an extension of Krusell and Rios-Rull (1999) to incorporate uninsured idiosyncratic risk to income. Using this framework, we evaluate the response of social insurance...

We study the optimal Mirrlees taxation problem in a dynamic economy with idiosyncratic (productivity or preference) shocks. In contrast to the standard approach, which implicitly assumes that the mechanism is operated by a benevolent planner with full commitment power, we assume that any...

Infinitely repeated games have been used to argue that reputation can substitute for commitment in monetary policymaking. A drawback of this approach is that it implies multiple equilibria. I argue that nominal asset prices can be used as an equilibrium selection mechanism. First, I introduce...

This paper studies the optimality of a minimum wage law when it is used, jointly with a distortionary tax-transfer scheme, to redistribute income among agents with different marginal productivity. We build a dynamic and stochastic general equilibrium model with a Ramsey planner making decisions...