We compare the advantages of targeting either the growing sector or the shrinking sector in an economy where migration occurs too slowly, and the government has only second-best policy instruments. If the government is able to make commitments, we show (in a special case) that it should target...

In this paper we address the issue of multilateralism versus bilateralism in a situation where a home government's optimal policy is time-inconsistent and the time-consistent policy sub-optimal. Short-run production and wage rigidities create incentive for the government to surprise private...

This paper provides the algebra and a panel diagram to attempt to examine the so-called inflation- unemployment (or Phillips curve, or aggregate supply) example, the most popular example in the literature when introducing the concept of "time inconsistency" or "dynamic inconsistency". The...

Anti-smoking policies can in theory make smokers better off, by helping smokers with time-inconsistent preferences commit to giving up or reducing the amount they smoke. We use almost 20 years of British individual-level panel data to explore the impact on self-reported psychological well-being...

This paper explores how a principal with time-inconsistent preferences invests optimally in technology or capital. If the current principal prefers her future self to save more, she can increase current investments complementary to future savings and decrease investments in the strategic...