This paper explores the effects of fiscal policy in an economy based on indirect taxes, and taxing all income at the same rate. The focus of the paper is on the relative importance of consumption vs. income taxation, as well as on the provision of valuable public services. To this end, a...

This paper shows a standard RBC model, when augmented with a VAT evasion channel, where evasion depends on the consumption tax rate, can produce a hump-shaped consumption Laffer curve. Furthermore, when the evasion channel is turned off, the hump in the Laffer curve disappears, resulting in a...

This paper shows that a modified real business cycle (RBC) model, one that includes home production and fiscal spending shocks, can solve one of the RBC puzzles and generates zero correlation between wages and hours. In addition, the micro-founded model presented here provides a sound...

Motivated by the highly-unionized public sectors, the high public shares in total employment, and the public-sector wage premia observed in Europe, this paper examines the importance of public-sector unions for macroeconomic theory. The model generates cyclical behavior in hours and wages that...

Motivated by the highly-unionized public sectors, the high public shares in total employment, and the public-sector wage premia observed in Europe, this paper examines the importance of public-sector unions for macroeconomic theory. The model generates cyclical behavior in hours and wages that...

This paper explores the effects of fiscal policy in an economy based on indirect taxes, and in the presence of VAT evasion channel. In addition, the government is taxing all income at the same rate. The focus of the paper to compare and contrast two regimes - the exogenous (observed) vs. optimal...

In this paper we investigate the quantitative importance of search and matching fric- tions in Bulgarian labor markets. This is done by augmenting an otherwise standard real business cycle model a la Long and Plosser (1983) with both a two-sided costly search and fiscal policy. This introduces a...

Motivated by the highly-unionized public sectors, the high public shares in total em- ployment, and the public sector wage premia observed in Europe, this paper examines the importance of public sector unions for macroeconomic theory. The model gen- erates cyclical behavior in hours and wages...

Motivated by the high public employment, and the public wage premia observed in Europe, a Real-Business-Cycle model, calibrated to German data (1970-2007), is set up with a richer government spending side, and an endogenous private-public sector labor choice. To illustrate the effects of fiscal...