Many analysts expect the aging population to lead to a reduction in the growth of living standards. Income inequality – a problem that has been accentuated by the payroll tax hikes that were necessary to fund the public pension as the population ages – is becoming an increasing challenge at...

In this paper it is argued that the domestic division of labor and trade is organized according to the same principle as the international division of labor and trade – the Ricardian comparative advantages. After all, the ultimate source of these comparative advantages is the individual. The...

Many analysts expect the aging population to lead to a reduction in the growth of living standards. Income inequality – a problem that has been accentuated by the payroll tax hikes that were necessary to fund the public pension as the population ages – is becoming an increasing challenge at...

The aging population has raised at least two concerns about tax policy. First, taxes will need to be increased to cover higher public-pension and medical-care expenses when baby boomers have retired. Second, taxes can be cut in the meantime, as the government realizes the "fiscal dividend" that...

This paper explores the implications of economic and political inequality for the business cycle comovement of government purchases. We set up and compute a heterogeneous-agent neoclassical growth model, where households value government purchases which are financed by income taxes. A key...

In this Paper, we investigate the relation between public and private consumption, by constructing a general government spending dataset, by function, for twelve European Union countries. In particular, we split government consumption into two categories. The first category includes defence,...

The macroeconomic effects of different ways of rolling back the welfare state are analysed. Cutting public spending on market goods induces a lower interest rate, a higher wage, a lower capital stock and a fall in employment. Cutting public employment or the labour income tax rate leads, in...

Cross-country evidence on inflation and inequality suggests that they are positively correlated. I explore the hypothesis that this correlation is the outcome of a distributional conflict underlying the determination of fiscal policy.

This paper presents a political economy model of inflation as a result of social conflict. Agents are heterogeneous in terms of income. Agents' income levels determine their ability to hedge against the effects of inflation. The interaction of heterogeneous cash holdings and preferences over...

The current crisis calls for two main sets of policy measures. First, measures to repair the financial system. Second, measures to increase demand and restore confidence. While some of these measures overlap, the focus of this note is on the second set of policies, and more specifically, given...