This paper studies the capital accumulation and welfare implications of reducing capital income taxation in a general equilibrium economy with uninsurable investment risks. It has been shown that, with uninsurable investment risks, under-accumulation of capital may result compared to the...

Many policy-makers and researchers view the recent financial and real economic crises across North America, Europe and beyond as a global phenomenon. Some have argued that this global recession has a common source: the U.S. financial crisis. This paper investigates the extent to which a credit...

Financial crises in emerging economies in the 1980s and 1990s often entailed abrupt declines in foreign capital inflows, improvements in trade balance, and large declines in output and total factor productivity (TFP). This paper develops a two-sector small open economy model wherein...

We study optimal monetary policy in an analytically tractable Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian model with rich cross-sectional heterogeneity. Optimal policy differs from that in a representative agent model because monetary policy can affect consumption inequality by reducing both idiosyncratic...

In the United States, 30% of households are coholders who simultaneously borrow on credit cards and hold liquid assets. This generates a rich distribution of gross wealth positions that underpins the distribution of net wealth often used to calibrate macroeconomic models. We show that, beyond...

I study how unsecured credit affects the extent to which unemployment insurance (UI) policies smooth cyclical fluctuations in aggregate consumption. To do so, I develop a real business cycle model with incomplete asset markets, frictional labor markets, and defaultable debt. Using empirically...

Many explanations for the decline in real interest rates over the last 30 years point to the role that population aging or rising income inequality plays in increasing the long-run aggregate demand for assets. Notwithstanding the importance of such factors, the starting point of this paper is to...

Using micro data from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey and Current Population Survey, I document that government spending shocks affect individuals differently over the life cycle. Young households increase their consumption after an expansionary shock while prime-age households reduce it,...

This paper finds that debt-financed government spending multipliers vary considerably depending on the location of the debt buyer. In a sample of 33 countries, we find that government spending multipliers are larger when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to foreign investors...

We study the effects of fiscal policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic at the firm, sector, country and global levels. First, we estimate the impact of COVID-19 and policy responses on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) business failures. We combine firm-level financial data from 50...