The termination of a representative financial firm due to excessive leverage may lead to substantial bankruptcy costs. A government in the tradition of Ramsey (1927) may be inclined to provide transfers to the firm so as to prevent its liquidation and the associated deadweight costs. It is shown that the optimal taxation policy to finance such transfers exhibits countercyclicality and history dependence, even in a complete market. These results are in contrast with pre-existing literature on optimal fiscal policy, and are driven by the endogeneity of the transfer payments that are required to salvage the financial firm.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
15405.
Length: Date of creation: Oct 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15405
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
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