We develop a model of commodity money and use it to analyze the following two questions motivated by issues in monetary history: What are the conditions under which Gresham's Law holds? And, what are the mechanics of a debasement (lowering the metallic content of coins)? The model contains light...

This paper examines the role for tax policies in productivity-shock driven economies with "catching-up-with-the-Joneses" utility functions. The optimal tax policy is shown to affect the economy counter-cyclically via procyclical taxes, i.e., "cooling down" the economy with higher taxes when it...

We describe and compare several algorithms for approximating the solution to a model in which inequality constraints occasionally bind. Their performance is evaluated and compared using various parameterizations of the one sector growth model with irreversible investment. We develop...

Revision of Working Paper 91-19

My empirical analysis a reveals a strong link between the terms of trade of industrial and developing countries. I show that the terms of trade developing countries are essentially the relative prices of commodity exports and manufactured imports. Similarly, I find that terms of trade...