We consider a homogenous good oligopoly with identical consumers who learn about prices either by (sequentially) visiting firms or by consulting a price agency who sells information about which firm charges the lowest price.

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...

We extend the model of risk sharing with limited commitment (Kocherlakota, 1996) by introducing both a public and a private (non-contractible and/or non-observable) storage technology. Positive public storage relaxes future participation constraints and may hence improve risk sharing, contrary...

We provide empirical evidence on the effects of tax liability changes in the United States. We make a distinction between “surprise” and “anticipated” tax shocks. Surprise tax cuts give rise to a large boom in the economy. Anticipated tax liability tax cuts are instead associated with a...

This study focuses on the formation of in-kind labour income in Russia. Using 1994 data on individuals, and raises two questions. Firstly about the distributive impact of social transfers from enterprises, and secondly about the effect of fringe benefits on individuals' well-bening.

We study the dynamic Ramsey problem of finding optimal public debt and linear taxes on capital and labor income within a tractable infinite horizon model with incomplete markets. With zero public expenditure and debt, it is optimal to tax the risky labor income and subsidize capital, while a...

Many resource-rich countries have negative genuine saving rates, so deplete their exhaustible natural resource wealth faster than they build up wealth in other assets. This phenomenon is stronger in more fractionalized countries with poor legal systems. We explain this by a power struggle about...

This paper develops an endogenous growth model with heterogeneous firms to analyze the impact of intra-industry trade on productivity growth. Growth is generated by selection, and sustained by entrants imitating successful incumbents. Firms are subject to idiosyncratic productivity shocks and...

Recent empirical evidence based on firm level data emphasizes firm heterogeneity in innovation activities and the different effects of process and product innovations on the productivity level and productivity growth. To match this evidence, this paper develops an endogenous growth model with...