A policy of forward guidance has been suggested either as a form of commitment (\Odyssean") or as a way of conveying information to the public (\Delphic"). I analyze the strategic interaction between households and the central bank as a game in which the central bank can send messages to the...

The aim of this paper is to study the relationship between the intertemporal behavior of taxes and wealth distribution. The optimal-taxation literature has often concentrated on representative-agent models, in which it is optimal to smooth distortionary taxes. When tax liabilities are unevenly...

This paper examines the set of Pareto efficient allocations in a finite period Mirrlees (1971, 1976) economy; each period represents a lifetime for an agent who cares about the utility of his descendants. In making Pareto comparisons, we use an interim concept of efficiency, and consider an...

This paper presents a continuous‐time model of sovereign debt. In it, a relatively impatient sovereign government's hidden type switches back and forth between a commitment type, which cannot default, and an opportunistic type, which can, and where we assume outside lenders have particular...