In an earlier paper, we showed that integrated individual accounts, allowing individuals to borrow against future pensions when they are unemployed, can be welfare increasing, because it allows increased inter-temporal consumption smoothing without attenuating incentives to search. Here, we...

We analyze the effects of changes in dividend tax policy using a life-cycle model of the firm, in which new firms first access equity markets, then grow internally, and finally pay dividends when they have reached steady state.In accordance with the traditional view of dividend taxation, new...

Previous work which showed that prices could aggregate perfectly the diverse information of traders depended critically on the assumption that all agents had constant absolute risk utility. We show that either all agents must have constant absolute risk aversion utility, or all must have...

This paper develops a simple model of macroeconomic behavior which incorporates the impact of financial market quot;imperfections,quot; such as those generated by asymmetric information in financial markets. These information asymmetries may lead to breakdowns in markets, like that for equity,...

This paper develops the basic analytics of moral hazard, for the two-outcome case where either a fixed damage accident occurs or it does not. The analysis focuses on the relationship between the insurance premium paid and the insurance benefits received in the event of an accident, and is...

The optimal income taxation problem has been extensively studied in one-period models. This paper analyzes optimal income taxation when consumers work for many periods. We also analyze what information, if any, that the government learns about abilities in one period can be used in later periods...

The ability of capital markets to distinguish firms of different value by the size of their initial equity offerings is attenuated when insiders can sell equity more than once. A model is developed in which there is price risk from holding equity between periods. When the uncertainty is small....

This paper shows that market economies with search and in which wages are affected by efficiency wage considerations are not constrained Pareto efficient. Wages are not set at Pareto efficient levels, nor is the level of employment (unemployment) Pareto efficient. We identify the nature of the...

In the last few years, there has developed a large literature, sometimes referred to as the new quot;public finance,quot; providing a quantitative analysis of a number of traditional problems within the field. This paper is concerned with surveying, or interpreting, what can be learned from this...

This paper provides the foundations of a general theory of information and the capital market. We show that in a pure gambling market, even with asymmetric information, there cannot exist an equilibrium with trade with rational individuals. We argue that although a pure exchange stock market is...