Economists are widely familiar with the Ricardian equivalence thesis. It maintains that, given the time-path of government spending, a change in taxation does not alter the set of feasible life-time consumption plans of the households and affects neither the demand for commodities and services...

Economists are widely familiar with the Ricardian equivalence thesis. It maintains that, given the time-path of government spending, a change in taxation does not alter the set of feasible life-time consumption plans of the households and affects neither the demand for commodities and services...

This note generalizes Feldstein’s (1976) criticism of Barro’s(1974) analysis for the case that the interest rate exceeds the growth rate. This is done by considering an economy in steady state where all agents hold “Barro expectations”: they believe that government debt must necessarily...

This paper analyses the empirical relationship between fiscal policy and the current account of the balance of payments and considers how Ricardian equivalence changes this relationship. To do so, we estimate a dynamic panel threshold model for 22 industrialised countries in which the...

The empirical evidence suggests that parents use inter vivos gifts (i.e., transfers of tangible and financial property) to compensate less well off children whereas post mortem bequests are divided equally among siblings. We study a theoretical model assuming, first, that the amounts given is...

We study the joint role of altruism and impatience, and the impact of evolution in the formation of long-term time preferences and in the determination of optimal consumption and optimal bequests. We show how the consumption paths of dynasties relate to altruism and to impatience, and we reason...

This paper develops a small New Keynesian model with capital accumulation and government debt dynamics. The paper discusses the design of simple monetary and fiscal policy rules consistent with determinate equilibrium dynamics in the absence of Ricardian equivalence. Under this assumption,...

We extend "economic equivalence" results, like the Ricardian equivalence proposition, to the political sphere where policy is chosen sequentially. We derive conditions under which a policy regime (summarizing admissible policy choices in every period) and a state are "politico-economically...

The paper generalizes Feldstein's criticism (Perceived Wealth in Bonds and Social Security, 1976) of Barro's analysis (Are Government Bonds Real Net Wealth?, 1974) for the case that the interest rate exceeds the growth rate. This is done by considering an economy in steady state where all agents...

This paper studies optimal linear income taxation and redistributive social insurance when the former has the traditional labor distortion and the latter generates both ex ante and ex post moral hazard. Private insurance is available and individuals differ in labor productivity and in loss...