Since Henry George (1839-1897) economists have been arguing that a tax on unim- proved land is an ideal tax on e¢ ciency grounds. Output taxes, on the other hand, have distortional effects on the economy. This paper shows that under asymmetric information output tax might be used along with...

With an overindebted public-sector, Brazil has been on the brink of a fiscal dominance problem for quite a long time. The term has been usually associated to a situation in which monetary policy becomes subordinated to fiscal needs. This paper calls attention to broader implications of prolonged...

This paper investigates the extent to which syndication in financial markets is related to collusive behavior. A group of financiers who have private information regarding their capability of monitoring an entrepreneur must decide whether to provide a loan individually in a competitive fashion,...

Corporate Boards usually come in two different shapes: unitary and dual. In the former, a single board/principal is responsible for monitoring and establishing performance targets; in the latter, these tasks are split between two boards/principals. This paper compares these two arrangements in...

We develop a general equilibrium model of wealth transfers in the presence of uncertain lifetimes and default. Without introducing exogenous debt constraints, agents are allowed to make collateral-backed promises at any state of their life span.

This paper reviews the exciting and rapidly expanding literature on realized volatility. After presenting a general univariate framework for estimating realized volatilities, a simple discrete time model is presented in order to motivate the main results. A continuous time specification provides...