We review the literature on resolving bank and corporate sector crises to identify government policies that affect the depth of a crisis and the ease and sustainability of recovery, and to analyze their fiscal cost. A consistent framework - including sufficient resources for loss-absorption and...

Keynes's “Grandchildren” essay famously predicted both a rapid increase in productivity and a sharp shrinkage of the workweek – to fifteen hours – over the century from 1930. Keynes was right (so far) about output per capita, but wrong about the workweek. The key reason is that he failed...

Why do governments employ inefficient policies to redistribute income towards special interest groups (SIGs) when more efficient ones are available? To address this puzzle we derive and test predictions for a set of policies where detailed data is available and an efficiency ranking is feasible:...

What are the most efficient means of redistribution in an unequal economy? We answer this question by characterizing the optimal shape of non-linear income and wealth taxes in a dynamic general equilibrium model with uninsurable idiosyncratic risk. Our analysis reproduces the distribution of...

Many of the most pernicious economic institutions and policies create entry barriers or manipulate factor prices to transfer resources from entrepreneurs and workers to groups that hold political power. These inefficiencies partly result from the fact that direct and efficient fiscal instruments...

The political left turn in Latin America, which lagged its transition to liberalized market economies by a decade or more, challenges conventional economic explanations of voting behavior. This paper generalizes the forward-looking voter model to a broad range of dynamic, non-concave income...

There are many sources of political risk to public provision of pensions. This paper analyzes legislation to alter the retirement income system. This approach naturally recognizes that some changes in the system are good responses to social risks, while others generate such risks. Thus the...