This paper studies the effectiveness of corporate tax incentives in reducing the effective tax rate (ETR) on income from capital to stimulate business investment during economic downturns. We focus on tax rate incentives (TRIs), such as corporate tax rate cuts, and tax base incentives (TBIs),...

This paper explores the implications of time varying volatility for optimal monetary policy and the measurement of welfare costs. We show how macro-economic models with linear and quadratic state dependence in their variance structure can be used for the analysis of optimal policy within the...

We study an individual's incentive to search for a job in the presence of random criminal opportunities. These opportunities extenuate moral hazard, as the individual sometimes commits crime rather than searching. Even when he searches, he applies less effort. We then revisit the design of...

This paper argues that forward-looking indices of the effective tax burden on income from capital, namely effective marginal and average tax rates, are negatively biased because traditional models overlook dividend constraints associated with financial tax incentives, such as accelerated...

We develop a regime switching vector autoregression where artificial neural networks drive time variation in the coefficients of the conditional mean of the endogenous variables and the variance covariance matrix of the disturbances. The model is equipped with a stability constraint to ensure...

This paper studies optimal macroeconomic policy when nonlinearity in the business cycle is described by a vector smooth transition autoregression (VSTAR). A structural identification of the VSTAR that yields a low-dimension and certainty-equivalent nonlinear quadratic regulator (NLQR) problem is...

This paper investigates the incentives that may induce workers to supplement income from unemployment benefits by engaging in temporary informal work. Using a dynamic model of job-search with moral hazard that incorporates a stylised schedule of benefit payments, we describe how informal sector...