This paper presents an overlapping generations model in which children seek to manipulate the size of the end-of-life bequest they receive from the parent. I first use numerical simulations to show this intergenerational strategic behavior does not negate the debt neutrality assertions of Ricardian equivalence. Then, by introducing capital gains and inheritance taxes, I show the crowding out ef...

We compute the value of a firm that pays its cash flows each period through share repurchases in a dynamic environment where personal taxes are paid on realized capital gains and dividends. These results provide a measure of the personal tax advantages of equity financing relative to debt financing, which are often cited as increasing the cost of debt. The initial price of the firm depends on t...

Governments in emerging markets often behave like a “tormented insurer,” who would like to smooth government outlays given the randomness of public revenues in an imperfect world where the only public debt instrument is a non-state-contingent bond denominated in units of tradable goods. How can a fiscal authority tell if the stock of public debt is consistent with fiscal solvency in this enviro...

We analyze how different budgetary rules affect the stability of an economy in a basic endogenous growth model with public debt and a state-dependent consumption tax rate. We show that a discretionary policy implies that the government violates its inter-temporal budget constraint along a balanced growth path, whereas a balanced budget rule guarantees that the economy is stable. A rule based de...

Recent fiscal interventions have raised concerns about US public debt, future fiscal pressure, and long-run economic growth. This paper studies fiscal policy design in an economy in which: (i) the household has recursive preferences and is averse to both shortand long-run uncertainty, and (ii) growth is endogenously sustained through innovations whose market value is sensitive to the tax system...

This paper considers a small open economy where government pursues debt targeting policy. In this setting, I find the optimal debt targeting rule crucially hinges on the assumption of bond market structure, i.e. whether household can purchase state-contingent bond. In addition, the country’s foreign asset holding and government’s debt level may have substantial impact on the optimal debt target...

I present a unified framework to analyze debt relief and macroprudential policies in a liquidity trap when households have private information. I develop a model with a deleveragingdriven recession and a liquidity trap in which households differ in their impatience, which is unobservable. Ex post debt relief stimulates the economy, but anticipated debt relief encourages overborrowing ex ante, m...

The standard theory of tax smoothing says that the government runs a deficit to finance investment projects with a market rate of return and temporary high levels of public consumption. Taxes are used to finance permanent spending and losses on public investment. Deficit financing is used to offset some of the short-run costs of structural reforms. A prudent government deliberately downplays ex...

In this paper, I extend the Barro-Becker model of endogenous fertility to incorporate specific fiscal policies and use it to study the effects of the fiscal policy changes following WWII on fertility in the United States. The US government went through large changes in fiscal policy after the beginning of WWII. The marginal income tax rate for an average American jumped from 4% on average befor...