Myopic governments and welfare-enhancing debt limits

A Model of Liability Dollarization and Myopic Governments

Liability dollarization of the domestic banking system represents a source of vulnerability for emerging market countries. The root cause is a lack of faith in the domestic currency, which ultimately stems from the belief that the government will not follow policies that promote longrun currency stability. This paper presents a model in which government myopia determines the unofficial dollariz...

Governments Debt and Asset Management and Financial Crises : Sellers Beware

Inflation , Nominal Debt , Housing , and Welfare ∗

This paper evaluates the welfare effects of lowering the long-run inflation target in a life-cycle model of housing, nominal debts, and money (ie., a liquid asset). To smooth out idiosyncratic earnings risk, agents make portfolio choices in the presence of transactions costs and borrowing constraints. We find that lowering inflation from 2% to 1% improves welfare and that the welfare gain is ev...

Welfare Dynamics under Time Limits

Among the most important changes brought about by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is the imposition of time limits. In this paper, we analyze a simple model in which a potential welfare recipient chooses how to allocate her time-limited endowment of benefits so as to maximize her expected lifetime utility. Not surprisingly, the model reveals ...

Is Voluntary Profiling Welfare Enhancing?

Although consumer profiling advocates tout benefits from personalization, consumer advocacy groups oppose profiling in online markets because of concerns about privacy and price discrimination. Policies such as opt-out or opt-in that provide consumers the option to voluntarily participate in profiling are the favored compromise. We compare voluntary profiling to no profiling and show that volun...