We consider the effect of excluding government investment from the deficit subject to the limits of the European Stability and Growth Pact. In the model we consider, residents of a given country discount future costs and benefits of government spending more than efficiency would dictate, because...

We construct a dynamic Heckscher-Ohlin model in which the initial distribution of production factors across economies makes factor price equalization impossible. The model produces dynamics similar to those of the neoclassical growth model. However, free trade prevents identically parameterized...

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between public capital spending and population dynamics at the state level. Empirically, we document two robust facts. First, states with faster population growth do not spend more (per capita) to accommodate the needs of their growing population....

We study the effects of credit shocks in a model with heterogeneous entrepreneurs, financing constraints, and a realistic firm-size distribution. As entrepreneurial firms can grow only slowly and rely heavily on retained earnings to expand the size of their business, we show that, by reducing...

Hayashi and Prescott speculate that the anemic performance of the Japanese economy since the early 1990s can be understood in terms of how any "well functioning" private sector might react to an exogenous productivity shock. In particular, they downplay the role of monetary and financial factors...

We study optimal taxation in an economy with financial frictions, in which the government cannot directly redistribute towards the agents in need of liquidity but otherwise has access to a complete set of linear tax instruments. We establish a stark result. Provided this is feasible, optimal...

We investigate the welfare implications of changing the mix between capital and labor taxes for a model economy in which heterogeneous households face uninsurable labor income risk. The stochastic process for labor earnings we construct is consistent with empirical estimates of earnings risk,...

We investigate the welfare implications of changing a proportional capital income tax for a model economy in which heterogeneous households face labor income risk and trade only one asset. Labor taxes are adjusted at the time of the reform to maintain long run budget balance. Our stochastic...

Optimal tax policies in dynamic models have unappealing features. In particular, optimal tax reform typically involves a large initial accumulation of government assets which is responsible for a large part of the welfare gains from optimal tax reform. In this paper, we investigate the...

We analyze the democratic politics of a rule that separates capital and ordinary account budgets and allows the government to issue debt only to finance capital items. Many national governments followed this rule in the 18th and 19th centuries and most US states do so today. Despite its...