Employment volatility is larger for young and old workers than for prime aged. At the same time, in economies with high tax rates, the share of total hours supplied by the young/old workers is smaller. These two observations imply a negative correlation between government size (measured by the...

The specification of an optimizing model of the monetary transmission mechanism requires selecting a policy regime, commonly commitment or discretion. In this paper we propose a new procedure for testing optimal monetary policy, relying on moment inequalities that nest commitment and discretion...