Intertemporal Distortions in the Second best

Stefania Albanesi and Roc Armenter ()

No 13629, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper studies the long run properties of intertemporal distortions in a broad class of second best economies. Our unified framework encompasses and extends many well known models, such as variants of the Ramsey taxation model with aggregate or idiosyncratic risk, and economies with incentive compatibility constraints due to limited commitment, political economy, self-enforcement or private information, or combinations of these. We identify a sufficient condition that rules out permanent intertemporal distortions: If there exists an allocation that satisfies all constraints and eventually converges to the limiting first best allocation, then intertemporal distortions are temporary in the second best. This result uncovers a common optimality principle linking the intertemporal allocation of resources with the ability to frontload distortions for this broad class of environments. A series of applications illustrates the significance of these findings.

JEL-codes: E6 H21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-mac
Note: EFG PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Published as Stefania Albanesi & Roc Armenter, 2012. "Intertemporal Distortions in the Second Best," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 79(4), pages 1271-1307.

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Related works:
Journal Article: Intertemporal Distortions in the Second Best (2012)
Working Paper: Intertemporal Distortions in the Second Best (2007)
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