This paper studies the relation between inequality and welfare in a general- equilibrium model in which people can choose to be either producers or preda- tors. We assume some people (the privileged) are well endowed with human capital and other people (the unprivileged) are poorly endowed with...

This paper incorporates the economic theory of predation into the theory of economic growth. The analytical framework is a dynamic general-equilibrium model of the interaction between two dynasties, one of which is a potential predator and the other is its prey. Each generation of each dynasty...

This paper analyzes the financial and war-spending policies of a state that faces a war in which defeat would result in the loss of sovereign power and in which the material consequences, conditional on avoiding defeat, are stochastic. The analysis takes explicit account of the historical...

Although tax policy in most historical cases has been barely distinguishable from legalized theft, why have tax and spending policies in a few unusually fortunate communities, such as some of the modern democracies, apparently been, if not welfare maximizing, at least relatively benevolent? We...

This paper analyzes a reputational equilibrium in a model in which nominally denominated sovereign debt serves to shift risk associated with the unpredictability of tax revenues from the sovereign to its lenders. The analysis answers the following set of related questions: Why would a sovereign...

This paper analyzes the possible inception of rational inflationary bubbles under the assumption that the empirically relevant environment precludes the existence of rational deflationary bubbles. The analysis shows that if a rational inflationary bubble exists, then it must have started on the...

For the period 1959-1972 money growth in the United States was positively correlated with past inflation and negatively correlated with past unemployment, whereas for the period 1973-1984 this correlation pattern was reversed. International data, moreover, show that the eight largest western...

This paper reports empirical tests for the existence of rational bubbles in stock prices. The analysis focuses on a familiar model that defines market fundamentals to be the expected present value of dividends, discounted at a constantrate, and defines a rational bubble to be a self-confirming...

History suggests the following stylized facts about default on sovereign debt:(1) Defaults are associated with identifiably bad states of the world. (2) Defaults are usually partial, rather than complete.(3) Sovereign states usually are able to borrow again soon after a default. Motivated by...