According to a recent, highly detailed, and conservative estimate by Gokhale and Smetters (2005), the present value difference between the U.S. government's projected future expenditures and its projected future tax receipts exceeds $60 trillion. Closing this enormous fiscal gap requires a...

We derive the optimal fiscal policy for a government that is committed to honoring its debt but faces investors which fear a sovereign default. We assume that investors are able to learn from new evidence, as in Marcet and Sargent (1989), so that they can gradually correct their overly...

This paper analyses the theoretical and policy implications of assuming firm-specific lumpy investment behaviour by firms and compares such implications to those occurring when adopting different investment specifications in a new-Keynesian framework. We develop numerical simulations of the...

We compute the value of the net taxes that current policies impose to present and future generations of Italians. We use such figures to show that current fiscal policies are neither financially sustainable nor fair to future generations. This is due to the generous treatment awarded to past and...

To contrast the severe global recession of 2009, governments in most advanced countries implemented expansionary fiscal policies leading to a steep increase in public debt. As economies recover, a critical choice is whether to stabilize debt at post-crisis levels, or to bring it down to...