This paper considers an optimal taxation environment where household income is private information, and the government randomly audits and punishes households found to be underreporting. We prove that the optimal mechanism derived using standard mechanism design techniques has a bad equilibrium...

In this paper we show that interest rate rules lead to multiple equilibria when the central bank faces a limit to its ability to print money, or when private agents are limited in the amount of bonds that can be pledged to the central bank in exchange for money. Some of the equilibria are...

This paper considers an optimal taxation environment where household income is private information, and the government randomly audits and punishes households found to be underreporting. We prove that the optimal mechanism derived using standard mechanism design techniques has a bad equilibrium...

We analyze a new class of equilibria that emerges when a central bank conducts monetary policy by setting an interest rate (as an arbitrary function of its available information) and letting the private sector set the quantity traded. These equilibria involve a run on the central bank's interest...

In this paper we show that interest rate rules lead to multiple equilibria when the central bank faces a limit to its ability to print money, or when private agents are limited in the amount of bonds that can be pledged to the central bank in exchange for money. Some of the equilibria are...

Until the last couple of years, most central banks around the world conducted monetary policy by setting targets for short-term interest rates. Manoeuvering interest rates as a way to achieve low and stable inflation is now regarded as a success story. Yet this was not always the case. As...

This paper considers the existence of bad equilibria in a random auditing tax model with limits on the number of households which can be audited. Specifically, we present sufficient conditions for a tax-audit mechanism which has truth telling as one equilibrium to have other equilibiria in which...