Search Results
Working Paper
Optimal Capital Taxation Revisited
We revisit the question of how capital should be taxed, arguing that if governments are allowed to use the kinds of tax instruments widely used in practice, for preferences that are standard in the macroeconomic literature, the optimal approach is to never distort capital accumulation. We show that the results in the literature that lead to the presumption that capital ought to be taxed for some time arise because of the initial confiscation of wealth and because the tax system is restricted.
Journal Article
The optimal price of money
The optimal inflation tax is computed in monetary models where money is costly to supply. The models are simple general equilibrium models with money in the utility function or a transactions technology. The inflation tax is a means of raising taxes to finance exogenous government expenditures. The alternative means of revenue are also distortionary. The main point of this article is to show that the robustness of the optimality of the Friedman rule, of a zero nominal interest rate, resides in the assumption that money is produced at zero cost.
Working Paper
Nominal debt as a burden on monetary policy
We study the effects of nominal debt on the optimal sequential choice of monetary and debt policy. When the stock of debt is nominal, the incentive to generate unanticipated inflation increases the cost of the outstanding debt even if no unanticipated inflation episodes occur in equilibrium. Without full commitment, the optimal sequential policy is to deplete the outstanding stock of debt progressively until these extra costs disappear. Nominal debt is therefore a burden on monetary policy, not only because it must be serviced, but also because it creates a time inconsistency problem that ...
Journal Article
A stable money demand: Looking for the right monetary aggregate
A money demand relationship with M1 as the monetary aggregate holds very well until the mid-1980s but not well after that. This could be because the demand for money is not a stable relationship. The authors' conclusion is that the measure of money is not a stable measure. Technological innovation and changes in regulatory practices in the past two decades have made other monetary aggregates as liquid as M1. Once an appropriately adjusted measure of money is taken into consideration, the stability of money demand is recovered.
Report
Optimal Capital Taxation Revisited
We revisit the question of how capital should be taxed. We allow for a rich set of tax instruments that consists of taxes widely used in practice, including consumption, dividend, capital, and labor income taxes. We restrict policies to respect promises that the government has made in the previous period regarding the current value of wealth. We show that capital should not be taxed if households have preferences that are standard in the macroeconomics literature. We show that Ramsey outcomes that must respect such promises are time consistent. We show that the presumption in the literature ...
Working Paper
Inside-outside money competition
We study how competition from privately supplied currency substitutes affects monetary equilibria. Whenever currency is inefficiently provided, inside money competition plays a disciplinary role by providing an upper bound on equilibrium inflation rates. Furthermore, if "inside monies" can be produced at a sufficiently low cost, outside money is driven out of circulation. Whenever a 'benevolent' government can commit to its fiscal policy, sequential monetary policy is efficient and inside money competition plays no role.
Discussion Paper
The optimal inflation tax
We determine the second best rule for the inflation tax in monetary general equilibrium models where money is dominated in rate of return. The results in the literature are ambiguous and inconsistent across different monetary environments. We compare the derived optimal inflation tax solutions across the different environments and find that Friedman's policy recommendation of a zero nominal interest rate is the right one.
Report
Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises with Long Stagnations
We assess the quantitative relevance of expectations-driven sovereign debt crises, focusing on the southern European crisis of the early 2010s and the Argentine default of 2001. The source of multiplicity is the one in Calvo (1988). Crucial for multiplicity is an output process characterized by long periods of either high growth or stagnation, which we estimate using data for these countries. We find that expectations-driven debt crises are quantitatively relevant but state dependent, as they occur only during periods of stagnation. Expectations, and how they respond to policy, are the major ...