Diary of Econ 244, Spring 19

We have the third midterm

We review the climate change material, especially the part of what to do.

We look at the problem of what to do.

We look at damages.

We finished the calibration of the structural and of the non structural models of carbon circulation

We continue with climate change looking at the role of oceans.

We finish the study of externalities and we begin to look at climate change.

We continue with the study of externalities and their treatment. We are almost done.

We finished social insurance. We started looking at Externalities.

We have the second midterm.

We finish talking about Social Security. We start talking about Social insurance. (283)

We finish looking at how our theory accounts for international differences in hours worked. We start talking about Social Security. (267)

We look at the proposition that labor and consumption taxes are the same, this time with some non-labor income. We start to look at how our theory accounts for international differences in hours worked.

We discuss Social Welfare Functions. We start looking at the problem of a household with consumption, and labor and capital income taxes. We look at the proposition that labor and consumption taxes are the same with only labor income.

We discuss the marriage tax penalty and whether it is a good idea and why do people marry nevertheless. We also talked about a few other properties of the U.S. tax system.

We went over a summary of Gokhale’s Generational Accounting findings. We started the history of U.S. income taxes, the U.S. income tax rates and we talked about properties of the tax system (progressivity, regressivity).

We talked about the Ricardian Propositions and its exceptions: Borrowing constraints, transfers of the tax burden (to the extent that altruism is not operational), and non lump sum taxation (looking for examples of it, like the poll tax or the tax of height). We started looking at Generational accounting.

We reviewed expected utility. We started the third part. We looked at the government budget constraint and at Ricardian Equivalence. (sl 150)

Class canceled by the University because of weather.

We have the first midterm.

We finished income risk, and the whole of part II. The first homework was due. (Slide 115)

We finish the many period model including how it fares with respect to the empirical evidence with and started the model with income risk.

We discussed in detail taxes in the two period model. We started with Part II, the life cycle model.

We continued the discussion of the two period Overlapping Generations Model. We discussed again the steady state (capital, wages, interest rate, consumptions). We looked at dynamics. We looked at population growth

We finishded solving the model with perfect borrowing. We looked at borrowing constraints. We discussed bankruptcy and some properties of the U.S. bankruptcy code. We started looking at the general equilibrium model.

I continued the two period model with the graphic description of the problem and performed comparative statics exploring the response of choices to changes in endowments and interest rates. I also talked about balanced growth preferences and the nice properties of log (unit independent) (page 52)

I finished with the facts (state and local, cyclical behavior, debt). I started the two period model with the description of the objective function, the constraints, the first order conditions and discussed the guarantee of a unique solution. Please go over it (slide 36).

Wu went over the rules of the course and some of the facts of the U.S. Federal sector (slide 17).