Tax Smoothing in Frictional Labor Markets
Tax Smoothing in Frictional Labor Markets

Author: David M. Arseneau

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13:

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"We re-examine the optimality of tax smoothing from the point of view of frictional labor markets. Our central result is that whether or not this cornerstone optimal fiscal policy prescription carries over to an environment with labor market frictions depends crucially on the cyclical nature of labor force participation. If the participation rate is exogenous at business-cycle frequencies -- as is typically assumed in the literature -- we show it is not optimal to smooth tax rates on labor income in the face of business-cycle shocks. However, if households do optimize at the participation margin, then tax-smoothing is optimal despite the presence of matching frictions. To understand these results, we develop a concept of general-equilibrium efficiency in search-based environments, which builds on existing (partial-equilibrium) search-efficiency conditions. Using this concept, we develop a notion of search-based labor-market wedges that allows us to trace the source of the sharply-contrasting fiscal policy prescriptions to the value of adjusting participation rates. Our results demonstrate that policy prescriptions can be very sensitive to the cyclical nature of labor-force participation in search-based environments"--P. 1.

Bargaining, Fairness, and Price Rigidity in a DSGE Environment
Bargaining, Fairness, and Price Rigidity in a DSGE Environment

Author: David M. Arseneau

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13:

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"A growing body of evidence suggests that an important reason why firms do not change prices nearly as much as standard theory predicts is out of concern for disrupting ongoing customer relationships because price changes may be viewed as "unfair". Existing models that try to capture this concern regarding price-setting are all based on goods markets that are fundamentally Walrasian. In Walrasian goods markets, transactions are spot, making the idea of ongoing customer relationships somewhat difficult to understand. We develop a simple dynamic general equilibrium model of a search-based goods market to make precise the notion of a customer as a repeat buyer at a particular location. In this environment, the transactions price plays a distributive role as well as an allocative role. We exploit this distributive role of prices to explore how concerns for fairness influence price dynamics. Using pricing schemes with bargaining-theoretic foundations, we show that the particular way in which a "fair" outcome is determined matters for price dynamics. The most stark result we find is that complete price stability can arise endogenously. There are issues about which models based on standard Walrasian goods markets are silent"--P. 1.