This paper presents an analysis of the effect of bureaucratic corruption on economic growth through a public finance transmission channel. At the theoretical level, we develop a simple dynamic general equilibrium model in which financial intermediaries make portfolio decisions on behalf of...

In most monetary models of economic growth, higher long-run inflation is associated with a decline in the growth rate and employment. We show that this result is sensitive with respect to the specification of the cash-in-advance constraint. We consider three types of endogenous growth models: 1)...

This paper proposes an answer to the question of why social unrest sometimes occurs in the wake of an IMF Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). Under certain circumstances, partly determined by a country’s comparative advantage, a nation’s elite may have an incentive to make transfers to the...

Taxes and cash transfers reduce income inequality more in France than elsewhere in the OECD, because of the large size of the flows involved. But the system is complex overall. Its effectiveness could be enhanced in many ways, for example so as to achieve the same amount of redistribution at...

This paper examines the consequences of international financial integration in a two sector heterogeneous agent dynamic general equilibrium model of occupational choice with financial constraints and idiosyncratic risks. We discuss the macroeconomic and distributional effects of financial market...

This paper examines the effect of trade integration and comparative advantage on one of a country’s institutions, which in turn inuences its economic efficiency. The environment we explore is one in which a country’s lower classes may revolt and appropriate wealth owned by a ruling elite....

We analyze how trade openness matters for interstate conflict over productive resources. Our analysis features a terms-of-trade channel that makes security policies trade-regime dependent. Specifically, trade between two adversaries reduces each one’s incentive to arm given the opponent’s...

The social cost of carbon is the central economic measure for aggregate climate change damages and functions as a metric for optimal carbon prices. Previous literature shows that inequality significantly influences the level of the social cost of carbon, but mostly neglects a major source of...

We examine the effect of prospects of upward mobility (POUM) on the support for redistribution in an intragenerational context. In this context, existing literature so far fails to consider the potential indirect channel via political ideology through which mobility expectations affect...

Why might the European member states seek for Fiscal Union? Coordination, macro-stability purposes and provision of (European) public goods are certainly goals of paramount importance for the implementation of Fiscal Union at European level. However, there is an equally important component of...