Die vorliegende Studie wurde von Sandra Hamella, geb. Waller, während ihrer Tätigkeit als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im ifo Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, München, begonnen und im Sommer 2005 an der Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Regensburg als Dissertation...

This paper extends the work of Barro and Gordon (1983) to general linear models with rational expectations. We examine the question whether the optimal policy rule, i.e. the one that a government which could pre-commit itself would use, can be sustained as a consistent rule in the sense defined...

In several recent papers macroeconomic policy has been modelled in the context of a game of incomplete information. A central result of the work by Backus and Driffill and by Barro is that the uncertainty may provide an incentive for the government to maintain a socially efficient policy of zero...

A classical equilibrium model is analysed of two interdependent monetary economies in which it is assumed that cash is the only asset, and which is characterized by perfect foresight, flexible exchange rates and imperfect substitution between home and foreign goods. The first-best optimum sets...

This paper tackles the issue of choosing roles in duopoly games. First, it is shown that the two necessary (and sufficient, if both satisfied) conditions for sequential play to emerge at equilibrium are that both leader and follower are at least weakly better off than under simultaneous play....

We characterize Markov-perfect equilibria in a setting where the absence of government commitment affects the financing of productive public capital. We show that at any date, a government in office only considers intertemporal distortions over two consecutive periods in choosing taxes. We then...

In a representative democracy, voters can use elections to protect their property by holding politicians accountable for the tax policies they implement while in office. This paper demonstrates that performance voting can - partly or wholly - solve the capital levy problem. We characterise the...

This paper re-examines the issue of the credibility and sustainability of optimal policies derived from Pontryagin's Maximum Principle and generally regarded as time-inconsistent, in models with forward-looking rational expectations. Specifically, it considers the behaviour of such models in the...