We bring together the theories of duality and dynamic programming. We show that the dual of an additively separable dynamic optimization problem can be recursively decomposed using summaries of past Lagrange multipliers as state variables. Analogous to the Bellman decomposition of the primal...

We provide sufficient conditions for the validity of the first-order approach for two-period dynamic moral hazard problems where the agent can save and borrow secretly. The first-order approach is valid if the following conditions hold: (i) the agent has non-increasing absolute risk aversion...

Several frictions restrict the government s ability to tax assets. First of all, it is very costly to monitor trades on international asset markets. Moreover, agents can resort to non-observable low-return assets such as cash, gold or foreign currencies if taxes on observable assets become too...

We study a largely neglected channel through which government expenditures boost private consumption. We set up a lifecycle model in which households are subject to health shocks. We estimate a negative impact of public health care on household consumption dispersion, wealth and saving....

Several frictions restrict the government’s ability to tax assets. First, it is very costly to monitor trades on international asset markets. Second, agents can resort to nonobservable low-return assets such as cash, gold or foreign currencies if taxes on observable assets become too high....

We study the earning structure and the equilibrium assignment of workers to firms in a model in which workers have social preferences and skills are perfectly substitutable in production. We allow firms to offer long terms contracts and for frictions in the labour market in the form of mobility...

Several recent papers have proposed recursive Lagrangian-based methods for solving dynamic contracting problems. These methods give rise to Bellman operators that incorporate either a dual inf-sup or a saddle point operation. We give conditions that ensure the Bellman operator implied by a dual...

Many dynamic incentive problems have primal recursive formulations in which utility promises serve as state variables. We associate families of dual recursive problems with these by selectively dualizing constraints. We make transparent the connections between recursive primal and dual...

Several recent papers have proposed recursive Lagrangian-basedmethods for solving dynamic contracting problems. Thesemethods give rise to Bellman operators that incorporate either a dual inf-sup or a saddle point operation. We give conditions that ensure the Bellman operator implied by a dual...

We study optimal taxation of savings in an economy where agents face self-control problems and are allowed to be partially naive. We assume that the severity of self-control problems changes over the life-cycle. We focus on quasihyperbolic discounting with constant elasticity of intertemporal...