The Time Consistency of Optimal Monetary Policy with Heterogeneous Agents

This paper studies the structure and time consistency of optimal monetary policy from a public finance perspective in an economy where agents differ in preference for liquidity and holdings of nominal assets. I find that the presence of distributional effects breaks the link between time consistency and high inflation, which characterizes representative agent models. For a large class of economies, optimal monetary policy is time consistent. I relate these findings to key historical episodes of inflation and deflation.Inflation Distribution Heterogeneity

Inflation and Inequality

Cross-country evidence on inflation and income inequality suggests that they are positively correlated. I explore the hypothesis that this correlation is the outcome of a distributional conflict underlying the determination of fiscal policy.Inflation Inequality Distribution Bargaining

Optimal Taxation of Entrepreneurial Capital with Private Information

This paper studies optimal taxation of entrepreneurial capital with private information and multiple assets. Entrepreneurial activity is subject to a dynamic moral hazard problem and entrepreneurs face idiosyncratic capital risk. We first characterize the optimal allocation subject to the incentive compatibility constraints resulting from the private information. The optimal tax system implements such an allocation as a competitive equilibrium for a given market structure. We consider several market structures that differ in the assets or contracts traded and obtain three novel results. First, differential asset taxation is optimal. Marginal taxes on bonds depend on the correlation of their returns with idiosyncratic capital risk, which determines their hedging value. Entrepreneurial capital always receives a subsidy relative to other assets in the bad states. Second, if entrepreneurs are allowed to sell equity, the optimal tax system embeds a prescription for double taxation of capital income – at the firm level and at the investor level. Finally, we show that taxation of assets is essential even with competitive insurance contracts, when entrepreneurial portfolios are also unobserved.

Intertemporal Distortions in the Second best

This paper studies the long run properties of intertemporal distortions in a broad class of second best economies. Our unified framework encompasses and extends many well known models, such as variants of the Ramsey taxation model with aggregate or idiosyncratic risk, and economies with incentive compatibility constraints due to limited commitment, political economy, self-enforcement or private information, or combinations of these. We identify a sufficient condition that rules out permanent intertemporal distortions: If there exists an allocation that satisfies all constraints and eventually converges to the limiting first best allocation, then intertemporal distortions are temporary in the second best. This result uncovers a common optimality principle linking the intertemporal allocation of resources with the ability to frontload distortions for this broad class of environments. A series of applications illustrates the significance of these findings.

Home Production, Market Production and the Gender Wage Gap: Incentives and Expectations

The purpose of this paper is to study the joint determination of gender differentials in labor market outcomes and in the household division of labor. Specifically, we explore the hypothesis that incentive problems in the labor market amplify differences in earnings due to gender differentials in home hours. In turn, earnings differentials reinforce the division of labor within the household, leading to a potentially self-fulfilling feedback mechanism. The workings of the labor market are key in our story. The main assumptions are that the utility cost of work effort is increasing in home hours, and that higher effort should correspond to higher incentive pay. Household decisions are Pareto efficient, leading to a negative correlation between relative home hours and earnings across spouses. We use the Census and the PSID to study these predictions and find that they are supported by the data.

Dynamic optimal taxation with private information

We study dynamic optimal taxation in a class of economies with private information. Constrained optimal allocations in these environments are complicated and history-dependent. Yet, we show that they can be implemented as competitive equilibria in market economies supplemented with simple tax systems. The market structure in these economies is similar to that in Bewley (1986): agents supply labor and trade risk-free claims to future consumption, subject to a budget constraint and a debt limit. Optimal taxes are conditioned only on two observable characteristics—an agent’s accumulated stock of claims, or wealth, and her current labour income—and they are not additively separable in these variables. The marginal wealth tax is decreasing in labour income and its expected value is generally positive. The marginal labour income tax is decreasing in wealth.Taxation ; Information theory

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports The Gender Unemployment Gap

This paper presents preliminary findings and is being distributed to economists and other interested readers solely to stimulate discussion and elicit comments. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and are not necessarily reflective of views at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors. The Gender Unemployment Ga

Redistribution and Optimal Monetary Policy: Results and Open Questions

What are the properties of optimal fiscal and monetary policies with heterogeneous agents? This is a pressing question, given the wealth of evidence on heterogeneity in cash holdings and labor income. Yet, until recently it remained largely unexplored. In this paper, I show that with heterogeneity the Friedman rule is optimal only if positive nominal interest rates do not ameliorate constraints on redistribution. With an empirically plausible cross-sectional correlation between money holdings and labor income, the Friedman rule is optimal if the government favors redistribution to the poor. I discuss these findings and propose several directions for future research.

Expectation Traps and Monetary Policy

Why is it that inflation is persistently high in some periods and persistently low in other periods? We argue that lack of commitment in monetary policy may bear a large part of the blame. We show that, in a standard equilibrium model, absence of commitment leads to multiple equilibria, or expectation traps. In these traps, expectations of high or low inflation lead the public to take defensive actions which then make it optimal for the monetary authority to validate those expectations. We find support in cross-country evidence for key implications of the model.