Search Results
Working Paper
Unique Implementation of Permanent Primary Deficits?
In an economy with incomplete markets and consumers who are sufficiently risk averse, we show that the government can uniquely implement a permanent primary deficit using nominal debt and continuous Markov strategies for primary deficits and payments to debtholders. But this result fails if there are also useless pieces of paper (bitcoin for short) that can be traded. If there is trade in bitcoin, then there is no continuous Markov strategy for the government that leads to unique implementation. Instead, there is a continuum of equilibria with distinct real allocations in which the price of ...
Working Paper
Permanent Primary Deficits, Idiosyncratic Long-Run Risk, and Growth
We consider an economy with perpetual youth and inelastic labor supply that grows endogenously. Consumers are subject to idiosyncratic capital accumulation risk and markets are incomplete. The government purchases consumption goods, makes transfers in the form of baby bonds, and it can use consumption and wealth taxes. The wealth distribution is given in closed form. When the intertemporal elasticity of substitution ɛ is equal to 1, the government can run a permanent primary deficit, up to a finite upper bound, if the coefficient of relative risk aversion is high enough and the factor share ...
Working Paper
A Stochastic Bubble Forest
We consider an economy with overlapping generations of relatively patient consumers who live for two periods. There is within-cohort heterogeneity in old-age endowments that depends on an aggregate state. That state is independent and identically distributed across generations. We assume consumers in their old age cannot be forced to give up any real resources. A stationary equilibrium in which state-contingent claims can be sold against the collateral of a single safe bubble security is efficient. The same allocation is also an equilibrium outcome in an economy with a sufficient number of ...