This paper analyses a growth model wherein saving results from bequestas-consumption. It first looks at the market equilibrium and at the optimal solution. Then it turns to the issue of decentralizing the optimal solution with various taxes and transfers. Depending on the available instruments,...

This paper establishes, in the context of the Diamond (1965) overlapping generations economy with production, that the risk that savings in unbacked assets (like fiat money or public debt) become worthless implies that, not only the first-best steady state, but even the best steady state...

I show in this paper that in an overlapping generations economy with production à la Diamond (1970) in which the agents can only save in terms of capital (i.e. with no asset bubbles à la Tirole (1985) or public debt as in Diamond (1965)), there is a period-by- period balanced fiscal policy...

This paper analyses a growth model wherein saving results from bequest-as-consumption. It first looks at the market equilibrium and at the optimal solution. Then it turns to the issue of decentralizing the optimal solution with various taxes and transfers. Depending on the available instruments,...

When a public good is excludable it is possible to charge individuals for using the good. We study the role of prices on excludable public goods within an extension of the Stern-Stiglitz version of the Mirrlees optimal income tax model. Our discussion includes both the case where the public good...

This paper addresses optimal taxation, when the relationship between consumption and environmental damage is uncertain and treated as a random variable by policy makers. The main purpose is to analyze how additional uncertainty about this relationship affects the optimal unit tax on the...

In this paper we study the consequences of endogenous active labor market policies. In particular it is assumed that all viable policies have to please the employed majority. The main objective is to seek the answer to the following question: In what sense does the political equilibrium deviate...

This paper addresses transboundary environmental problems in the context of an optimal tax problem, when part of the labor force is mobile across countries. The policy instruments include both commodity taxation and nonlinear income taxation. We show how the tax policy in a noncooperative...

Should unemployment compensation be paid indefinitely at a fixed rate or should it decline (or increase) over a worker’s unemployment spell? We examine these issues using an equilibrium model of search unemployment. The model features worker-firm bargaining over wages, free entry of new jobs,...

The paper discusses which redistributional policies are efficient when the identity of the high and low skill persons is private information. Our major purpose is to identify the more efficient policy when, presumably for administrative reasons, the policy option is confined to the choice...