Does Ricardian Equivalence Hold When Expectations Are Not Rational?

This paper considers the Ricardian Equivalence proposition when expectations are not rational and are instead formed using adaptive learning rules. We show that Ricardian Equivalence continues to hold provided suitable additional conditions on learning dynamics are satisfied. However, new cases of failure can also emerge under learning. In particular, for Ricardian Equivalence to obtain, agents’ expectations must not depend on government’s financial variables under deficit financing.     

Increasing Returns, Learning, and Beneficial Tax Competition

We analyze the welfare impact of entrepreneur mobility in a two‐country overlapping generations model. Increasing returns in production yield multiple equilibria that are stable under adaptive learning. Governments compete for the mobile resource by setting income taxes. We show that large welfare gains can arise from noncooperative taxation. If expectational barriers prevent the realization of high output equilibria, tax competition can sufficiently perturb expectations so that high steady states become attainable. Once in a high production regime, governments may institute cooperative tax increases or reductions so as to bring the economy to the global joint optimum without disturbing the regime.