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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Economic Theory

Constrained Inefficiency And Optimal Taxation With Uninsurable Risks, Piero Gottardi, Atsushi Kajii, Tomoyuki Nakajima Feb 2016

Constrained Inefficiency And Optimal Taxation With Uninsurable Risks, Piero Gottardi, Atsushi Kajii, Tomoyuki Nakajima

Research Collection School Of Economics

When individuals' labor and capital income are subject to uninsurable idiosyncratic risks, should capital and labor be taxed, and if so how? In a two-period general equilibrium model with production, we derive a decomposition formula of the welfare effects of these taxes into insurance and distribution effects. This allows us to determine how the sign of the optimal taxes on capital and labor depend on the nature of the shocks and the degree of heterogeneity among consumers' income, as well as on the way in which the tax revenue is used to provide lump-sum transfers to consumers. When shocks affect …


Optimal Taxation And Debt With Uninsurable Risks To Human Capital Accumulation, Piero Gottardi, Atsushi Kajii, Tomoyuki Nakajima Nov 2015

Optimal Taxation And Debt With Uninsurable Risks To Human Capital Accumulation, Piero Gottardi, Atsushi Kajii, Tomoyuki Nakajima

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider an economy where individuals face uninsurable risks to their human capital accumulation and analyze the optimal level of linear taxes on capital and labor income together with the optimal path of government debt. We show that in the presence of such risks, it is beneficial to tax both labor and capital and to issue public debt. We also assess the quantitative importance of these findings, and show that the benefits of government debt and capital taxes both increase with the magnitude of idiosyncratic risks and the degree of relative risk aversion.


Wealth Inequality And Financial Development: Revisiting The Symmetry Breaking Mechanism, Haiping Zhang Sep 2015

Wealth Inequality And Financial Development: Revisiting The Symmetry Breaking Mechanism, Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.


Contracting Over Prices, Shurojit Chatterji, Sayantan Ghosal Dec 2012

Contracting Over Prices, Shurojit Chatterji, Sayantan Ghosal

Research Collection School Of Economics

We define a solution concept, perfectly contracted equilibrium, for an intertemporal exchange economy where agents are simultaneously price takers in spot commodity markets while engaging inefficient, non-Walrasian contracting over future prices. Without requiring that agents have perfect foresight, we show that perfectly contracted equilibrium outcomes are a subset of Pareto optimal allocations. It is a robust possibility for perfectly contracted equilibrium outcomes to differ from Arrow-Debreu equilibrium outcomes. We show that both centralized banking and retrading with bilateral contracting can lead to perfectly contracted equilibria.


Corrigendum To "A Gaussian Approach For Continuous Time Models Of The Short Term Interest Rate", Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu Feb 2011

Corrigendum To "A Gaussian Approach For Continuous Time Models Of The Short Term Interest Rate", Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

An error is corrected in Yu and Phillips (2001) (Econometrics Journal, 4, 210-224) where a time transformation was used to induce Gaussian disturbances in the discrete time equivalent model. It is shown that the error process in this model is not a martingale and the Dambis, Dubins-Schwarz (DDS) theorem is not directly applicable. However, a detrended error process is a martingale, the DDS theorem is applicable, and the corresponding stopping time correctly induces Gaussianity. We show that the two stopping time sequences differ by O(a2), where a is the pre-specified normalized timing constant.


Financial Frictions, Capital Reallocation, And Aggregate Fluctuations, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang Mar 2008

Financial Frictions, Capital Reallocation, And Aggregate Fluctuations, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We address an important business cycle fact, i.e., the amplified and hump-shaped responses of output to productivity shocks, in a dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions. Models with financial frictions in the current literature have either the amplification mechanism or the propagation mechanism. Our model shows that the dynamic interaction of borrowing constraints, endogenous capital accumulation, and capital reallocation among agents with different productivity constitutes a mechanism through which the effects of productivity shock on aggregate output are amplified and propagated, more in line with the empirical evidence than other related models in the literature.


The Micro-Foundations Of Intertemporal Price Discrimination, Winston T. H. Koh Feb 2006

The Micro-Foundations Of Intertemporal Price Discrimination, Winston T. H. Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the optimality of intertemporal price discrimination for a durable-good monopoly in a model where infinitely-lived households face an intertemporal budget constraint, and consume both durable goods and non-durable goods. We prove that the optimal price of the durable good is not constant, and may decrease or increase over time. Some households may choose to purchase the durable good at a later date, and pay lower or higher prices, since the gain in discounted utility of consuming more of the non-durable good more than compensates for the loss in utility from delaying the consumption of the durable good. …


The Micro-Foundations Of Intertemporal Price Discrimination, Winston T. H. Koh Jan 2005

The Micro-Foundations Of Intertemporal Price Discrimination, Winston T. H. Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the optimality of intertemporal price discrimination for a durable-good monopoly in a model where infinitely-lived households face an intertemporal budget constraint, and consume both durable goods and non-durable goods. We prove that the optimal price of the durable good is not constant, and may decrease or increase over time. Some households may choose to purchase the durable good at a later date, and pay lower or higher prices, since the gain in discounted utility of consuming more of the non-durable good more than compensates for the loss in utility from delaying the consumption of the durable good.


Future Fiscal And Budgetary Shocks, Hian Teck Hoon, Edmund S. Phelps Sep 2004

Future Fiscal And Budgetary Shocks, Hian Teck Hoon, Edmund S. Phelps

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study here the effects of future tax and budgetary shocks on present levels of economic activity and real interest rates in a nonmonetary and possibly non-Ricardian economy. The paper first takes up an (unanticipated) temporary tax cut to be effective on a given future date—a delayed debt bomb. The sudden prospect of this future-dated shock causes at once a drop in the (unit) value placed on the firms’ business asset, the customer, and accordingly on the price of shares—with the result that the hourly wage, hours worked and GDP drop in tandem. This paradox of reduced activity through announcement …