IFDP Paper: Optimal Monetary and Fiscal Policy under Limited Foresight

Martin Bodenstein and Junzhu ZhaoWe investigate Barro's random walk hypothesis according to which distortionary labor taxes should follow a random walk for any stochastic process of government expenditures, see Barro (1979). When agents experience cognitive discounting as in Gabaix (2020), they perceive government debt as wealth, and the random walk result breaks down except for knife-edge combinations of limited rationality by policymakers and the private sector.

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