By using the recent Gertler and Kiyotaki's (2010) setup, this paper explores the interaction between real distortions stemming from the labor market institutions and financial shocks. We find that neither labor market imperfections nor fiscal institutions determining tax wedges have an impact on...

We consider the optimal factor income taxation in a standard R&D model with technical change represented by an increase in the variety of intermediate goods. Redistributing the tax burden from labour to capital will increase the employment rate in equilibrium. This has opposite effects on two...

Social leisure is generally found to be positively correlated with life satisfaction in the empirical literature. We ask if this association captures a genuine causal effect of this good on subjective wellbeing by using panel data from the GSOEP. Fixed effect estimation techniques take care of...

The role of sociability and relational goods has generally been neglected in the formulation of standard economics textbook preferences. Our findings show that relational goods have significant and positive effects on self declared life satisfaction, net of the impact of other concurring...

We provide empirical support for a DSGE model with nominal wage stickiness where growth is driven by learning-by-doing and money shocks and their variance are allowed to impact on long-run output growth. In our theoretical model the variance of monetary shocks has a negative effect on growth,...

This paper studies the issue of price stability in a continuous time optimizing general equilibrium model with overlapping generations. It is shown that fiscal policy has effects on nominal variables. Fiscal expansions are inflationary even when the government intertemporal budget constraint is...

This paper presents a Dynamic New Keynesian model with wealth effects to study the performance of monetary policy under Ricardian and non-Ricardian fiscal regimes. The model is calibrated to euro area quarterly data. The interactions between fiscal policy and interest rate rules have critical...

This paper studies the issue of price stability in a continuous time optimizing general equilibrium model with overlapping generations. It is shown that fiscal policy has effects on nominal variables. Fiscal expansions are inflationary even when the government intertemporal budget constraint is...

We challenge the widely held belief that New Keynesian models cannot predict an optimal positive inflation rate. In fact we find that even for the US economy, characterized by relatively small government size, optimal trend inflation is justified by the Phelps argument that the inflation tax...