The Peruvian economy has exhibited remarkable growth in the past 20 years. Good tax and monetary policies, along with comprehensive structural adjustment, which has attracted substantial foreign investment, are regarded as the pillars of this success. Notwithstanding the advances experienced on...

A prerequisite for the adoption of redistributive policies in a democracy is that there be elected representatives who are either committed to or who have an incentive to advocate for such policies. To evaluate the prospects of such an outcome, this paper develops a theory exploring two...

This paper explores the qualitative and quantitative implications of optimal taxation in a developing economy when economic growth is endogenously determined. We differentiate this class of economies from a developed economy in two aspects: informal sector is quantitatively significant and...

This paper analyzes the effect of trade liberalization on government spending in a general equilibrium model with a continuum of industries supplying tradable and nontradable goods under monopolistic competition. Trade liberalization is modeled as the opening up of product markets between two...

This paper investigates empirically the effect of import diversity on government size and provides evidence for the love of variety effect on government spending described in Hanslin (2008). I argue that crowding out of firms is an important cost of public good provision. However, due to the...

Climate change economics mostly neglects sizeable interactions of carbon pricing with other fiscal policy instruments. Conversely, public finance typically overlooks the effects of future decarbonization efforts when devising instruments for the major goals of fiscal policy. We argue that such a...