Policymakers often use measures of tax incidence (generational accounts) as criteria for policy selection. We use a quantitative model of optimal intergenerational policy to evaluate the ability of the tax incidence metric to capture the identity of recipients and contributors and the magnitudes...

May 30, 2012. "Demographics, Redistribution, and Optimal Inflation," with Carlos Garriga and Christopher J. Waller. Presented by Christopher Waller at the 2012 BOJ-IMES Conference Demographic Changes and Macroeconomic Performance.

We study the interaction between population demographics, the desire for redistribution in the economy, and the optimal inflation rate in a deterministic economy with capital. The intergenerational redistribution tension is intrinsic in the general equilibrium life-cycle models we use. Young...