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In times when elevated government debt raises concerns about dimmer global growth prospects, we ask: How can the government provide incentives for innovation in a fiscally sustainable way? We address this question by examining the Ramsey problem of finding optimal tax and subsidy schemes in a model in which growth is endogenously sustained by risky innovation. We characterize the shadow value of growth and entry in the innovation sector. We find that a profit tax is required to replicate the first-best in order to balance the externalities associated with innovative activity. At the second-best, the profit tax is designed to optimally respond to growth shocks above and beyond what is prescribed by the standard tax-smoothing incentives in economies with exogenous growth. The interplay of risk and innovation opens a new margin for optimal taxation.

The narrative learning cycle outlined in this article was developed to address three perceived weaknesses in experiential learning cycles and involved three shifts: a shift from one concrete experience to multiple stories; a shift from individual action to social performance; and a shift from an emphasis on cognitive learning to a development of practice. This article recounts the use of such a narrative learning cycle in the development of new practices in the design and practice of an undergraduate management course. Its concluding comments appraise the potential of a narrative learning cycle to enable a professional practitioner to take heed of voices other than their own, appreciate the unavoidably social nature of action and plan their contribution to jointly negotiated practice.

We consider models where the Ramsey-optimal fiscal policy under Full Commitment (FC) is time-inconsistent and define a new notion of optimal policy, Limited-Time Commitment (LTC). Successive one-period lived governments can commit to future plans over a finite horizon. We provide a sufficient condition on the mapping from finite policy sequences to allocations, such that LTC and FC lead to the same outcomes. We then show that this condition is verified in several existing models, allowing FC Ramsey plans to be supported with a finite commitment horizon (often a single period). We relate the required degree of commitment to the economic environment: in economies without capital, the minimum degree of commitment required is given by the government debt maturity; in economies with capital and government balanced-budget constraints, the required commitment is given by the horizon over which the budget has to be balanced. Finally, we solve numerically for the LTC equilibrium of an economy where the equivalence result fails and show that a single year of commitment to capital taxes provides substantial welfare gains relative to the No-Commitment time-consistent policy.

AbstractObjectives. To compare cancer care among American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) patients with other racial groups. Methods. We used Washington State cancer registry records to identify 33,624 patients < age 65 diagnosed with local and regional stage breast, colorectal, and lung cancer from 1997 to 2003. Records were linked with regional tribal registry and Medicaid records to identify AIAN. Results. Enrollment in Medicaid at or after diagnosis was 50% for AIAN, 34% for Hispanic, 33% for black, and 18% for Asian/Pacific Islander compared to 13% of white cancer patients. AIAN were equally as likely as whites and other minority groups to receive surgery for breast and colorectal cancer, but significantly less likely (OR = 0.67) to receive surgery for lung cancer. Medicaid patients in general were less likely to receive surgery within 2 months of diagnosis, but AIAN were no less likely to receive timely surgery compared to other racial groups. Conclusion. AIAN rely more heavily than other racial groups on Medicaid for insurance after they are diagnosed with cancer. Issues associated with Medicaid enrollment, as well as non‐insurance related factors may account for delays in time to surgery and lower rates of lung cancer surgery among AIAN.

The Supreme Court of Virginia has handed down seven recent decisions addressing the authority of an agent to change the principal's estate plan, legal malpractice claims in estate planning, rights of incapacitated adults, limits of the constructive trust doctrine, effects of a reversionary clause in a deed, ownership of an engagement ring, and proof of undue influence. The 2017 Virginia General Assembly clarified rules on legal malpractice and tenancies by the entireties, adopted the Uniform Trust Decanting Act and the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, and expanded provisions governing estate administration, life insurance, and advance medical directives. Other legislation affecting wills, trusts, and estates included clarifications and technical corrections relating to augmented estate claims, non-exoneration of encumbered property, administration procedures, life insurance, adult financial exploitation, death certificate amendments, and spousal exemptions from real estate tax.

We study the design of optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian model with labor turnover costs in which wages are set according to a right to manage bargaining where the firms' counterpart is given by currently employed workers. Our model captures well the salient features of European labor market, as it leads to sclerotic dynamics of worker flows. The coexistence of those types of labor market frictions alongside with sticky prices gives rise to a non-trivial trade-off for the monetary authority. In this framework, firms and current employees extract rents and the policy maker finds it optimal to use state contingent inflation taxes/subsidies to smooth those rents. Hence, in the optimal Ramsey plan, inflation deviates from zero and the optimal volatility of inflation is an increasing function of firing costs. The optimal rule should react to employment alongside inflation.

We study the design of optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian model with labor turnover costs in which wages are set according to a right to manage bargaining where the firms' counterpart is given by currently employed workers. Our model captures well the salient features of European labor market, as it leads to sclerotic dynamics of worker flows. The coexistence of those types of labor market frictions alongside with sticky prices gives rise to a non-trivial trade-off for the monetary authority. In this framework, firms and current employees extract rents and the policy maker finds it optimal to use state contingent inflation taxes/subsidies to smooth those rents. Hence, in the optimal Ramsey plan, inflation deviates from zero and the optimal volatility of inflation is an increasing function of firing costs. The optimal rule should react to employment alongside inflation.

This paper studies optimal monetary policy rules in a framework with sticky prices, matching frictions and real wage rigidities. Optimal monetary policy is given by a constrained Ramsey plan in which the monetary authority maximizes the agents' welfare subject to the competitive economy relations and the assumed monetary policy rule. I find that optimal policy should deviate from the strict inflation targeting since the policy maker faces a typical unemployment/inflation trade-off. In this context and unlike a standard New Keynesian model stabilizing inflation is not sufficient to stabilize the marginal cost (hence the output gap) since the latter also depends on the evolution of unemployment. The matching frictions add a congestion externality since the number of unemployed in the market and their bargaining power reduce the probability of forming matches. Hence optimal monetary policy features unemployment targeting along with inflation targeting.