Public opinion influences politicians, and therefore influences public policy decisions. What are the roles of self-interest, knowledge, and ideology in public opinion formation? And how do people learn about economic issues? Using a new, specially-designed survey, we find that most respondents...

Praktisch alle wirtschaftlich entwickelten Länder der Welt sind demokratisch. Sind demokratische Strukturen also kausal für wirtschaftlichen Wohlstand und Wachstum? Oder ist es vielmehr der wirtschaftliche Entwicklungsstand eines Landes, der eine Demokratie erst ermöglicht? Dieser Artikel...

This paper tries to distinguish between those features of macroeconomic dynamics which will stand the test of time and which will not. It reviews the rational expectations and the representative agent models. It concludes that more attention should be paid to nonlinear dynamics and uncertainty...

The development of countries in economic transition is often misunderstood. These countries are neither underdeveloped nor are they developed, they are somewhere in between. Therefore, macroeconomic models of transitional economies must include aspects of both underdeveloped and developed...

The standard model of signaling used in open economy macroeconomics concentrates on building a reputation when a policymaker's `type' is unknown. Observing tough policy leads market participants to raise the probability that a policymaker is tough, and therefore to expect tough policy in the...

Economists generally assume the existence of sufficient institutions to sustain a market economy and tax the citizens. However, this starting point cannot easily be taken for granted in many states, neither in history nor in the developing world of today. This paper develops a framework where...

While this is typically ignored, the properties of the stochastic process followed by aggregate consumption affect the estimates of the costs of fluctuations. This paper pursues two approaches to modelling aggregate consumption dynamics and to measuring how much society dislikes fluctuations,...

This paper analyzes the theoretical and quantitative implications of optimal capital taxation in the neoclassical growth model with aggregate shocks and incomplete markets. The model features a representative-agent economy with proportional taxes on labor and capital. I first consider the case...

Both academic thinking about monetary economics and the practice of monetary policy have changed dramatically since 1971-1973, when the rational expectations revolution was beginning and the Bretton Woods system was crumbling. The present paper considers whether the various changes that have...