Political Economy and Optimal Taxation
On the Relationship between Mobility, Population Growth, and Capital Spending in the United States (with Leslie McGranahan), NBER Working Paper no. 16970 (2011)
In this paper, we investigate the relationship between public capital spending and population dynamics at...
The Research Agenda: Marco Bassetto on the Quantitative Evaluation of Fiscal Policy Rules, Economic Dynamics Newsletter (2009)
Political Economy of Taxation in an Overlapping-Generations Economy, Review of Economic Dynamics (2008)
This paper analyzes the effects of intergenerational conflict on capital and labor income tax rates,...
Government Investment and the European Stability and Growth Pact (with Vadym Lepetyuk), NBER Working Paper #13200 (2007)
We consider the effect of excluding government investment from the deficit subject to the limits...
Politics and Efficiency of Separating Capital and Ordinary Government Budgets (with Thomas J. Sargent), Quarterly Journal of Economics (2006)
We analyze a `golden rule' that separates capital and ordinary account budgets and allows a...
Redistribution, Taxes, and the Median Voter (with Jess Benhabib), Review of Economic Dynamics (2006)
We study a simple model of production, accumulation, and redistribution, where agents are heterogeneous in...
On the Irrelevance of Government Debt when Taxes are Distortionary (with Narayana Kocherlakota), Journal of Monetary Economics (2004)
We consider a government that can only raise funds by levying distortionary taxes. We allow...
Optimal Fiscal Policy with Heterogeneous Agents (1999)
The aim of this paper is to study how the intertemporal behaviour of taxes affects...
Design of Government Strategies and Equilibrium Selection
What Is the Relationship between Large Deficits and Inflation in Industrialized Countries? (with R. Andrew Butters), Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (2010)
Examining industrialized countries, the authors find that large deficits are not associated with higher inflation...
Tax Riots (with Christopher Phelan), Review of Economic Studies (2008)
This paper considers an optimal taxation environment where household income is private information, and the...
Fiscal policy and price stability: The case of Italy, 1992–98, Chicago Fed Letter (2006)
Many authorities at home and abroad questioned Italy’s ability to meet the strict criteria to...
Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (2005)
The fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL) describes fiscal and monetary policy rules such...
Equilibrium and Government Commitment, Journal of Economic Theory (2005)
How should a government use the power to commit to ensure a desirable equilibrium outcome?...
A Game-Theoretic View of the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level, Econometrica (2002)
The goal of this paper is to probe the validity of the fiscal theory of...