This book presents a theoretically-based comprehensive analysis of macroeconomic consequences of fiscal policy using a popular economic model: the overlapping generations growth model. A wide range of essential public finance issues is analyzed, including the effects of tax reform on dynamic efficiency, positive and normative effects of public spending, considerations of taxes on fixed assets and monetary holdings, and sustainability of deficits. A unique approach is applied in the study of public finance: one expected to generate substantial interest among current graduate students and active researchers.

Optimal tax design attempts to resolve a well-known trade-off: namely, that high taxes are bad insofar as they discourage people from working, but good to the degree that, by redistributing wealth, they help insure people against productivity shocks. Until recently, however, economic research on this question either ignored people's uncertainty about their future productivities or imposed strong and unrealistic functional form restrictions on taxes. In response to these problems, the new dynamic public finance was developed to study the design of optimal taxes given only minimal restrictions on the set of possible tax instruments, and on the nature of shocks affecting people in the economy. In this book, Narayana Kocherlakota surveys and discusses this exciting new approach to public finance. An important book for advanced PhD courses in public finance and macroeconomics, The New Dynamic Public Finance provides a formal connection between the problem of dynamic optimal taxation and dynamic principal-agent contracting theory. This connection means that the properties of solutions to principal-agent problems can be used to determine the properties of optimal tax systems. The book shows that such optimal tax systems necessarily involve asset income taxes, which may depend in sophisticated ways on current and past labor incomes. It also addresses the implications of this new approach for qualitative properties of optimal monetary policy, optimal government debt policy, and optimal bequest taxes. In addition, the book describes computational methods for approximate calculation of optimal taxes, and discusses possible paths for future research.

In this collection of 17 articles, top scholars synthesize and analyze scholarship on this widely used tool of policy analysis, setting forth its accomplishments, difficulties, and means of implementation. Though CGE modeling does not play a prominent role in top US graduate schools, it is employed universally in the development of economic policy. This collection is particularly important because it presents a history of modeling applications and examines competing points of view. - Presents coherent summaries of CGE theories that inform major model types - Covers the construction of CGE databases, model solving, and computer-assisted interpretation of results - Shows how CGE modeling has made a contribution to economic policy

Revised and updated for the 2nd edition, this textbook guides the reader towards various aspects of growth and international trade in a Diamond-type overlapping generations framework. Using the same model type throughout the book, timely topics such as growth with bubbles, robots and involuntary unemployment, financial integration and house price dynamics, policies to mitigate climate change and the persistence of religion in a globalized market economy are explored. The first part starts from the “old” growth theory and bridges to the “new” growth theory (including R&D and human capital approaches). The second part presents an intertemporal equilibrium theory of inter- and intra-sectoral trade, investigates innovation, growth and trade and limits to public debt as well as nationally and internationally optimal climate policies. The debt dynamics of the Euro Zone and the origins of intra-EMU and Asian-US trade imbalances are also explored. The book is primarily addressed to upper undergraduate and graduate students wishing to proceed to the analytically more demanding journal literature.

This book presents a theoretically based comprehensive analysis of the macroeconomic consequences of fiscal policy using the thorough exploration of a popular economic model: the overlapping generations growth model. Using a reader-friendly approach designed to provide a fresh outlook on theoretical and applied issues in public-sector economies, a wide range of important public finance issues are analyzed, including the effects of tax reform on dynamic efficiency, positive and normative effects of public spending, the impact of taxes on fixed assets and monetary holdings, sustainability of deficits, conflicts between the younger and older generations, and spillover effects of tax reform on the rest of the open-economy world. Analysis of recent developments in the field of public finance is added to this theoretical framework.

This book provides an in-depth treatment of the overlapping generations model in economics incorporating production.

There is a belief now that family behavior over the life cycle can be analyzed by economic methods. This study deals with allocation of resources by families over time.