The optimal policy response to a low-probability extreme event is examined. A simple policy problem is solved for a sequence of different loss functions: quadratic, combined quadratic/absolute-deviation, absolute-deviation, combined quadratic/constant, and perfectionist. The paper shows that, under some simplifying assumptions, each of these loss functions puts less weight on a low-probability ...

This paper examines the effect of economic policy uncertainty and its components on firm-level investment. It is found that economic policy uncertainty in interaction with firm-level uncertainty depresses firms’ investment decisions. When firms are in doubt about costs of doing business due to possible changes in regulation, cost of health care and taxes, they become more guarded with investmen...

This paper studies the effects of asymmetries in re-election probabilities across parties on public policy and its subsequent propagation to the economy. The struggle between opposing groups–that disagree on the composition of public consumption–results in governments being endogenously short-sighted: Systematic under investment in infrastructure and overspending on public goods arise, as resou...

Is there a role for anonymous markets in which trades cannot be monitored by the government? We study an economy in which agents have private information and a benevolent government controls redistributive tax policy. While unrestricted access to anonymous markets reduces the set of policy instruments available to the government in general, it also limits the scope of inefficient redistributive...

This paper introduces an approach to the study of optimal government policy in economies characterized by a coordination problem and multiple equilibria. Such models are often criticized as not being useful for policy analysis because they fail to assign a unique prediction to each possible policy choice. We employ a selection mechanism that assigns, ex ante, a probability to each equilibrium i...

The paper discusses recent developments of German fiscal federalism—especially the Länderfinanzausgleich, i.e. Germany’s unique system of horizontal equalization. A ruling by the Constitutional Court has cracked the status quo, and the parties involved (federation and states) have begun a process of bargaining on a new equalization system. This process is assessed against the background of rece...

Environmental problems, such as climate change, have great uncertainties. Current expectations are that uncertainties about climate change will be resolved quickly. We examine this hypothesis theoretically and computationally. We consider Bayesian learning about the relationship between greenhouse gas levels and global mean temperature changes, a key uncertainty. Learning is non-trivial because...

The present paper reassesses the role of monetary conservatism in a setting with nominal government debt and endogenous fiscal policy. We assume that macroeconomic policies are chosen by monetary and fiscal policy makers who interact repeatedly but cannot commit to future actions. The real level of public liabilities is an endogenous state variable, and policies are chosen in a non-cooperative ...

The names Milton Friedman and John Taylor are associated with different monetary policy rules; but, as shown in this paper, the difference between their perceptions of how the economy works is not great. The monetary policy rules advanced by Taylor and Friedman are compared by linking the rules to the two economists’ underlying views about nominal rigidity, the source of trade-offs, the sources...

Output-growth and inflation differentials have been large and rather persistent since the beginning of the European Economic and Monetary Union. In the empirical literature, several fundamental causes of heterogeneities as regional productivity shocks and home-bias effects, and frictions as staggered-pricing and labor immobility are identified as causes for these differentials. In our model, we...