This paper studies the optimal top income tax rate. Top income earners are modeled as managers operating a span-of-control technology as in Rosen (1982). In particular, managerial skills increase managers' productivity through both supervision and indivisible decisions, thus giving rise to a...

A large positive literature emphasizes the role of technological change in driving the demand for skill and talent. We consider the normative implications of such technical change for policy design.

In this paper we study the efficient allocation of health resources across individuals. We focus on the relation between health resources and income (taken as a proxy for productivity). In particular we determine the efficient level of the health care social safety net for the indigent. We...

Business Cycle Accounting (BCA) is a helpful litmus test for quantitive macroeconomic models. Indeed, deviations from the data and a neo-classical growth model can be summarized as distortion of the efficiency of production or to optimality conditions such as leisure-consumption choices and...

This paper studies the optimal lending contract between an international lender and a sovereign country. A benevolent government finances uncertain expenditures - which are privately observed by the country - using external debt and optimally choosing domestic debt and taxes as in a standard...

How should society allocate health-care resources across individuals? In what ways is the current allocation of health-care inefficient? In this paper we study a model in which health status affects probability of survival and individuals are heterogeneous with respect to their labor...

We analyze an equilibrium concept called revision-proofness for infinite-horizon games played by a dynasty of players. Revision-proofness requires strategies to be robust to joint deviations by multiple players and is a refinement of sub-game perfection. Sub-game perfect paths that can only be...