We provide an introduction to optimal fiscal and monetary policy using the primal approach to optimal taxation. We use this approach to address how fiscal and monetary policy should be set over the long run and over the business cycle. We find four substantive lessons for policymaking: Capital...

We provide an introduction to optimal fiscal and monetary policy using the primal approach to optimal taxation. We use this approach to address how fiscal and monetary policy should be set over the long run and over the business cycle. We find four substantive lessons for policymaking: Capital...

We examine models with spatial separation and limited communication that have shown some promise toward resolving the disparity between theory and practice concerning optimal monetary policy; these models suggest that the Friedman rule may not be optimal. We show that intergenerational transfers...

In this paper we review and extend some of the key lessons that seem to be emerging from the Ramsey-inspired theory of dynamic optimal monetary and fiscal policies. We construct measures of the key distortions in our economy; we label these 'dynamic wedges'. Inflation, actual or anticipated,...

In a simple cash-credit model, I study the effects of the combination of costly tax collection and tax evasion on fiscal and monetary policy for optimal resource allocation. Allowing the informal sector to use cash more intensively than the formal sector, I compute the optimal interest and tax...

This paper studies optimal monetary and fiscal policies in an economy à la Lucas and Stokey (1983) and Lagos and Wright (2005) with multiple cash and credit goods. We show that optimal policies are in general time inconsistent due to insufficient number of instruments to influence future...

We consider an overlapping generation framework with search and private information to study optimal taxation. Agents sequentially trade in markets that are characterized by different frictions and trading protocols. In frictional decentralized markets, agents receive shocks that determine if...

This paper develops an overlapping-generations model with heterogeneous agents in terms of earning ability and cash-in-advance constraint. It shows that tax policy cannot fully replicate or neutralize the redistributive implications of monetary policy. While who gets the extra money becomes...

This paper develops an overlapping-generations model with heterogeneous agents in terms of earning ability and cash-in-advance constraint. It shows that tax policy cannot fully replicate or neutralize the redistributive implications of monetary policy. While who gets the extra money becomes...