G 6222   Adv. Macro Analysis II, Spring 2006

 

Prof. Stefania Albanesi, Columbia University

 

Syllabus

 

Assignments

 

Assignment 1, due Feb. 6. Solution

Assignment 2, due Feb. 20. Solution

Assignment 3, due March 10. Solution

Assignment 4, due March 20. Matlab programs.

Assignment 5, due April 10. Solution.

Assignment 6, due May 1. Solution

 

Handouts

 

Three Notions of Private Sector Equilibrium

Ramsey Equilibrium: The Primal Approach

Ramsey Allocation Problem in a Real Economy without Capital

Wedges in Private Information Economies

 

Readings

 

All readings in the syllabus, except for textbook chapters, are available on line from authors’ homepages, from JSTOR or from Columbia Library’s online journal archive, here.

A subset of the readings are linked below.

 

Ramsey Approach to Optimal Policies

 

V.V. Chari and Patrick Kehoe. 2000. Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Staff Report.

Andrew Atkeson, V.V. Chari and Patrick Kehoe. 1999. Taxing Capital Income: A Bad Idea. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis QR Vol. 23, No. 3.

Fernando Alvarez, Patrick Kehoe, and P. Andres Neumeyer. 2003. Time Consistency of Fiscal and Monetary Policies. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Staff Report 305.

Andres Erosa and Martin Gervais. 2002. Optimal Taxation in Life-Cycle Economies. Journal of Economic Theory Vol. 105.

 

Ramsey Policies with Incomplete Markets

 

Aggregate Shocks

 

Aiyagari, Rao, Albert Marcet, Thomas Sargent, Juha Seppala. 2002. Optimal Taxation without State Contingent Debt. Journal of Political Economy Vol. 110, N.6.

Farhi, Emmanuel. 2005. Capital taxation and Ownership when Markets are Incomplete. Manuscript, MIT.

 

Idiosyncratic Shocks

 

Aiyagari, Rao.  1995. Optimal Capital Income taxation with Incomplete Markets, Borrowing Constraints, and Constant Discounting. Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 103, N.6

Aiyagari, Rao, 1994. Uninsured idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Savings. Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 109, No. 3.

Angeletos, George-Marios. 2006. Uninsured Idiosyncratic Investment Risk and Aggregate Savings. Manuscript, MIT.

Chien, Yili, and Junsang Lee. 2005. Why Tax Capital? Manuscript, UCLA.

 

New Dynamic Public Finance Approach to Optimal Taxation

 

Narayana Kocherlakota has a dedicated page with a review of the literature, a link to all the papers, and a very useful annotated bibliography here.

For an introduction to dynamic economies with private information, see my chapter on “Social Insurance”.

 

Albanesi, Stefania. 2005. Optimal Taxation of Entrepreneurial Capital with Private Information. Manuscript, Columbia University.

Golosov, Mikhail, Aleh Tsyvinski, Ivan Werning. 2006. New Dynamic Public Finance: A User’s Guide. Prepared for the NBER Macroannual conference.

 

Time Consistent Policies

 

Ramsey Taxation

 

V.V. Chari. 1989. Time Consistency and Optimal Policy Design. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Quarterly Review, Vol. 12, No.4.

 

Optimal Taxation with Private Information

 

Roberts, Kevin. 1984. The Theoretical Limits to Redistribution. The Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 51, No.2.

Bisin, Alberto, and Adriano Rampini. 2005. Markets as Beneficial Constraints on the Government. Forthcoming, Journal of Public Economics.

Acemoglu, Daron, Mikhail Golosov, and Aleh Tsyvinski. 2005. Markets versus Governments: Political Economy of Mechanisms. Manuscript, MIT.

 

 

 

 

 

Updated: 4/21/2006