This paper analyzes the median voter's most preferred sequences of labor taxes in the standard neoclassical growth model. We consider an infinite horizon economy in which agents are heterogeneous with respect to both initial wealth and labor skills. We start by providing a set of sufficient...

signal about the fundamental. The rst characteristic implies that the best policy (tax on investment) with commitment is state contingent. The second and third characteristics make the information incomplete. In particular, agents have dierent information sets, and therefore dierent beliefs,...

In modern democracies, public policies are negotiated among elected policymakers. Yet, most macroeconomic models abstract from post-election negotiation. In order to understand the determinants of redistribution, this paper studies legislative bargaining in a growth model where individuals are...

The international trade literature finds strong links between firm growth and export decisions. In spite of this, the literature analyzing cross-country differences in firm growth commonly abstracts from trade. We develop a tractable, dynamic model to understand the consequences of this...

We explore the relationship between changes in labor income inequality and movements in labor taxes over the last decades in the US. In order to do so, we model this relation through a political economy channel by developing a median voter result over sequences of capital and labor taxes. We...

We explore how developmental and regulatory impediments to resource reallocation limit the ability of developing countries to adopt technologies: an efficient economy quickly innovates; but when the economy is unable to fully use resources liberated by closing firms, or when policy distortions...

This paper studies politicians who have a present-bias for spending; they want to increase current spending and procrastinate spending cuts. We argue that legislators' bias is more severe in economies with low institutional quality. We show that disagreement in legislatures leads to policy...