Using the results of risk-adjusted linear-quadratic-Gaussian optimal control with perfect and imperfect observation of the economy, we obtain prudent Taylor rules for monetary policies and also allow for imperfect information and cautious Kalman filters. A prudent central bank adjusts the...

Since the Helsinki European Council of December 1999, a process of increased coordination of fiscal policies in the area of the Euro seems to be on its way. In this paper I examine this process from the point of view of the independence of the European Central Bank (ECB). The interaction of the...

The political distortions in public investment projects are investigated within a bipartisan framework. The role of scrapping and modifying projects of previous governments receives special attention. The ruling party overspends on large ideological public investment projects and accumulates too...

Domeij and Klein (2005) have shown that the welfare gains of an optimal capital and labor income tax reform decline the longer the reform is pre-announced before its implementation. In other words, pre-announcement is costly in terms of welfare. I reexamine their claim by taking two additional...

In the presence of Walrasian labor markets social policies harm hours worked, employment and output. In non-Walrasian labor markets with trade unions, efficiency wages and/or costly search and mismatch progressive taxation and corporatism induce wage moderation and boost employment and output....

This paper makes use of optimal control relaxed problems to prove the absence of optimal trajectory in continuous time models with social increasing returns to scale where indeterminacy occurs. Although an efficient optimal policy does not exist, some chattering stabilization policies can mimic...

We consider an economy where individuals face uninsurable risks to their human capital accumulation, and study the problem of determining the optimal level of linear taxes on capital and labor income together with the optimal path of the debt level. We show both analytically and numerically that...

This paper investigates the relationship between fiscal consolidation, business plans and firm investment. Based on a detailed narrative of tax changes in Germany covering 40 years of fiscal adjustments, we define and exploit the exogenous variation of tax bills to quantify the effect of tax...

While politically attractive in order to generate tax revenues, the effects of a financial transaction tax (FTT) are scientifically disputed, not the least because seemingly small details of its implementation may matter a lot. In this paper, we provide experimental evidence on the different...

This paper analyses two features of concern to policy-makers in the countries of the prospective European Monetary Union: The solvency of their governments finances; and the accuracy of fiscal forecasts.