In this paper we assess whether forward guidance for monetary policy regarding the future path of interest rates is desirable. We distinguish between two cases where forward guidance for monetary policy may be helpful. First, forward guidance may reveal private information of the central bank....

This paper provides new empirical evidence for the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on corporate financial performance. In contrast to former studies, we examine two different regions, namely the USA and Europe. Our econometric analysis shows that environmental and social...

In this paper, we explore the benefits from a supply-side oriented fiscal tax policy within the framework of a New Keynesian DSGE model. We show that countercyclical tax rules, which are contingent on the observed welfare gap or alternatively on the markup shock and levied on value added, reduce...

This paper develops a decomposition algorithm by which a market economy with many households may be solved through the computation of equilibria for a sequence of representative agent economies. The paper examines local and global convergence properties of the sequential recalibration (SR)...

We study the optimal control of a pollutant that accumulates with a delay.We find that optimal paths are, in general, non-monotonic and oscillatory, but monotonic if the objective function is additively separable. Hence, using additively separable objective functions as an approximation to a...

In a standard partial equilibrium model of resource depletion, this paper charac- terizes and examines the solution to the optimal taxation problem when extraction is monopolistic. The main result is that the family of subgame perfect effciency- inducing tax/subsidy schemes may include some...

We examine banking competition when deposit or loan contracts contingent on macroeconomic shocks become feasible. We show that the risk allocation is efficient, provided that banks are not bailed out. In this case, banks may shift part of the risk to depositors. The private sector insures the...

Vote-buying is widely used by parties in developing countries to influence the outcome of elections. We examine the impact of vote-buying on growth. We consider a model with a poverty trap where redistribution can promote growth. We show that vote-buying contributes to the persistence of poverty...