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Working Paper
The Ramsey Steady-State Conundrum in Heterogeneous-Agent Economies
In infinite horizon, heterogeneous-agent and incomplete-market models, the existence of an interior Ramsey steady state is often assumed instead of proven. This paper makes two fundamental contributions: (i) We prove that the interior Ramsey steady state assumed by Aiyagari (1995) does not exist in the standard Aiyagari model. Specifically, a steady state featuring the modified golden rule and a positive capital tax is feasible but not optimal. (ii) We design a modified, analytically tractable version of the standard Aiyagari model to unveil the necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the ...
Working Paper
The Ramsey Steady-State Conundrum in Heterogeneous-Agent Economies
In infinite horizon, heterogeneous-agent and incomplete-market models, the existence of an interior Ramsey steady state is often assumed instead of proven. This paper makes two fundamental contributions: (i) We prove that the interior Ramsey steady state assumed by Aiyagari (1995) does not exist in the standard Aiyagari model. Specifically, a steady state featuring the modified golden rule and a positive capital tax is feasible but not optimal. (ii) We design a modified, analytically tractable version of the standard Aiyagari model to unveil the necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the ...
Working Paper
The Ramsey Steady-State Conundrum in Heterogeneous-Agent Economies
In infinite horizon, heterogeneous-agent and incomplete-market models, the existence of an interior Ramsey steady state is often assumed instead of proven. This paper makes two fundamental contributions: (i) We prove that the interior Ramsey steady state assumed by Aiyagari (1995) does not exist in the standard Aiyagari model. Specifically, a steady state featuring the modified golden rule and a positive capital tax is feasible but not optimal. (ii) We design a modified, analytically tractable version of the standard Aiyagari model to unveil the necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the ...
Working Paper
The Ramsey Steady State Conundrum in Heterogeneous-Agent Economies
In infinite horizon, heterogeneous-agent and incomplete-market models, the existence of an interior Ramsey steady state is often assumed instead of proven. This paper demonstrates the critical importance of proving the existence of the Ramsey steady state when conducting theoretical or numerical analysis on optimal fiscal policies. We use an analytically tractable heterogeneous-agent model to make our point by showing that the conditions for the existence of an interior Ramsey steady state are quite sensitive to structural parameter values. In particular, we show that researchers may draw ...
Working Paper
Why Might Lump-sum Transfers Not Be a Good Idea?
We adopt an analytically tractable Aiyagari-type model to study the distinctive roles of unconditional lump-sum transfers and public debt in reducing consumption inequality due to uninsurable income risk. We show that in the absence of wealth inequality, using lump-sum transfers is not an optimal policy for reducing consumption inequality---because the Ramsey planner opts to rely solely on public debt to mitigate income risk without the need for lump-sum transfers. This result is surprising in light of the popularity of universal basic income advocated by many politicians and scholars.
Working Paper
Are Unconditional Lump-sum Transfers a Good Idea?
The role of unconditional lump-sum transfers in improving social welfare in heterogenous agent models has not been thoroughly understood in the literature. We adopt an analytically tractable Aiyagari-type model to study the distinctive role of unconditional lump-sum transfers in reducing consumption inequality due to ex-post uninsurable income risk under borrowing constraints. Our results show that in the presence of ex-post heterogeneity and in the absence of wealth inequality, unconditional lump-sum transfers are not a desirable tool for reducing consumption inequality—the Ramsey planner ...
Working Paper
Are Unconditional Lump-sum Transfers a Good Idea?
The role of unconditional lump-sum transfers in improving social welfare in heterogenous agent models has not been thoroughly understood in the literature. We adopt an analytically tractable Aiyagari-type model to study the distinctive role of unconditional lump-sum transfers in reducing consumption inequality due to ex-post uninsurable income risk. Our results show that in the presence of ex-post heterogeneity and in the absence of wealth inequality, unconditional lump-sum transfers are not a desirable tool for reducing consumption inequality—the Ramsey planner opts to rely solely on ...
Working Paper
Optimal Fiscal Policy under Capital Overaccumulation
In a canonical model of heterogeneous agents with precautionary saving motives, Aiyagari (1995) breaks the classical result of zero capital tax obtained in representative-agent models. Aiyagari argues that with capital overaccumulation the optimal long-run capital tax should be strictly positive in order to achieve aggregate allocative efficiency suggested by the modified golden rule (MGR). In this paper, we find that, depending on the sources of capital overaccumulation, capital taxation may not be the most efficient means to restore the MGR when government debt is feasible. To demonstrate ...
Working Paper
Optimal Fiscal Policies under Market Failures
The aggregate capital stock in a nation can be overaccumulated for many different reasons. This paper studies which policy or policy mix is more effective in achieving the socially optimal (modified golden rule) level of aggregate capital stock in an infinite-horizon heterogeneous-agents incomplete-markets economy where capital may be over-accumulated for two distinct reasons: (i) precautionary savings and (ii) production externalities. By solving the Ramsey problem analytically along the entire transitional path, we show that public debt and capital taxation play very distinct roles in ...
Working Paper
Don’t Tax Capital — Optimal Ramsey Taxation in Heterogeneous Agent Economies with Quasi-Linear Preferences
We build a tractable heterogeneous-agent incomplete-markets model with quasi-linear preferences to address a set of long-standing issues in the optimal Ramsey taxation literature. The tractability of our model enables us to analytically prove the existence of a Ramsey steady state and establish several novel results: (i) In the absence of any redistributional effects of capital taxation or lump-sum transfers, the optimal capital tax is exclusively zero in a Ramsey steady state regardless of the modified golden rule (MGR) and government debt limits. (ii) Whether the MGR holds or not depends ...