In this paper we study how a benevolent government that cannot commit to future policy should trade off the costs and benefits of public expenditure. We characterize and solve for Markov-perfect equilibria of the dynamic game between successive governments. The characterization consists of an...

In this paper, we document some features of the distribution of income, consumption and wealth in Canada using survey data from many different sources. We find that wage and income inequality have increased substantially over the last 30 years, but that much of this rise was offset by the tax...

In this paper we explore the implications of tax competition between two jurisdictions in a neoclassical growth model under the assumption of perfect capital mobility. The government of each jurisdiction solves an optimal taxation problem under commitment, treating the other government's...

In this paper we quantitatively investigate the implications of a model of consumption risk sharing where infinitely-lived households are subject to exogenous idiosyncratic shocks to their earnings, and where the realization of these shocks are private information. Our theoretical contribution...