The paper studies the dynamic allocation effects of tax policy in the context of an overlapping generations model of the Blanchard-Yaari type. The model is extended to allow for endogenous labor supply and three tax instruments: a capital income tax, labor income tax, and consumption tax. Analytical expressions and simple diagrams are used to discuss the impact, transition, and long-run effects of tax policy changes. It is shown that a part of the long-run incidence of capital and consumption taxes falls on capital when households’ horizons are finite, whereas labor would fully bear the burden of these taxes in an infinite horizon model.

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.

Using an overlapping generations model, this paper examines tax policy effects across generations. The model incorporates housing assets separately from capital assets and includes taxes on labor income, capital income, consumption and housing assets. Tax reforms for each tax rate have different effects on tax burdens across generations and the overall efficiency of the economy, leading to different welfare costs for generations. Specifically, raising housing property taxes results in the smallest welfare loss by future generations, as in the model it does not hurt economic efficiency and the tax burden increases mainly for the elderly, who have accumulated housing assets in preparation for retirement.

Economies are constantly in flux, and economists have long sought reliable means of analyzing their dynamic properties. This book provides a succinct and accessible exposition of modern dynamic (or intertemporal) macroeconomics. The authors use a microeconomics-based general equilibrium framework, specifically the overlapping generations model, which assumes that in every period there are two generations which overlap. This model allows the authors to fully describe economies over time and to employ traditional welfare analysis to judge the effects of various policies. By choosing to keep the mathematical level simple and to use the same modeling framework throughout, the authors are able to address many subtle economic issues. They analyze savings, social security systems, the determination of interest rates and asset prices for different types of assets, Ricardian equivalence, business cycles, chaos theory, investment, growth, and a variety of monetary phenomena. Introduction to Dynamic Macroeconomic Theory will become a classic of economic exposition and a standard teaching and reference tool for intertemporal macroeconomics and the overlapping generations model. The writing is exceptionally clear. Each result is illustrated with analytical derivations, graphically, and by worked out examples. Exercises, which are strategically placed, are an integral part of the book.

Generational policy is a fundamental aspect of a nation's fiscal affairs. The policy involves redistributing resources across generations and allocating to particular generations the burden of paying the government's bills. This chapter of the second edition of The Handbook of Public Economics shows how generational policy works, how it's measured, and how much it matters to virtual as well as real economies. The chapter shows the zero-sum nature of generational policy. It then illustrates generational policy the difference between statutory and true fiscal incidence. It also illuminates the arbitrary nature of fiscal labels as well as their associated fiscal aggregates, including the budget deficit, aggregate tax revenues, and aggregate transfer payments. Finally, it illustrates the various guises of generational policy, including structural tax changes, running budget deficits, altering investment incentives, and expanding pay-as-you-go-financed social security. Once this example has been milked, the chapter shows that its lessons about the arbitrary nature of fiscal labels are general. They apply to any neoclassical model with rational economic agents and rational economic institutions. This demonstration sets the stage for the description, illustration, and critique of generational accounting. The chapter's final sections use a simulation model to illustrate generational policy, consider the theoretical and empirical case for and against Ricardian Equivalence, discuss government risk sharing and risk making, and summarize lessons learned.

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