Is inequality harmful for growth? We suggest that it is. To summarize our main argument: in a society where distributional conflict is more important, political decisions are more likely to produce economic policies that allow private individuals to appropriate less of the returns to growth...

using a general equilibrium model with maximising agents, the transmission of disturbances under alternative exchange rate regimes are analysed and compared. Expectations of future prices and monetary policies are crucial to the analysis. Apart from specific results, the paper also provides an...

In discussions about different international monetary arrangements it is often maintained that exchange rate variability has a negative influence on international trade and foreign investment. This paper addresses one specific aspect of this general issue, namely the effect of exchange rate...

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This paper demonstrates how time consistency of the Ramsey policy–the optimal fiscal and monetary policy under commitment–can be achieved. Each government should leave its successor with a unique maturity structure for the nominal and indexed debt, such that the marginal benefit of a...

The paper illustrates how one may assess our comprehensive uncertainty about the various relations in the entire chain from human activity to climate change. Using a modified version of the RICE model of the global economy and climate, we perform Monte Carlo simulations, where full sets of...

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A political constitution is like an incomplete contract: it spells out a procedure for making decisions and for delegating power, without specifying the content of those decisions. This creates a problem: the appointed policymaker could use this power for his own benefit against the interests of...

Preferential voting has been introduced in a number of proportional election systems over the last 20 years, mainly as a means to increase the accountability of individual politicians. But most of these reforms have been criticized as blatant failures. In this paper, we discover a genuinely new...