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Working Paper
A History of U.S. Tariffs: Quantifying Strategic Trade-Offs in Tariff Policy Design
U.S. tariff policy has historically balanced competing goals—revenue, protection and reciprocity. Policy priorities have shifted over time in response to changing economic and political conditions. Using a calibrated general equilibrium model, we illustrate these trade-offs through the lens of tariff Laffer curves. A 70 percent tariff maximizes U.S. revenue only in the absence of retaliation; this optimum falls to 30 percent with reciprocal tariffs. A unilateral 25 percent tariff delivers the largest domestic consumption gains through favorable terms-of-trade effects, though these gains ...
Working Paper
Modeling the Evolution of Expectations and Uncertainty in General Equilibrium
We develop methods to solve general equilibrium models in which forward-looking agents are subject to waves of pessimism, optimism, and uncertainty that turn out to critically affect macroeconomic outcomes. Agents in the model are fully rational, conduct Bayesian learning, and they know that they do not know. Therefore, agents take into account that their beliefs will evolve according to what they will observe. This framework accommodates both gradual and abrupt changes in beliefs and allows for an analytical characterization of uncertainty. Shocks to beliefs affect economic dynamics and ...