This paper looks at the incentives of individual members of a monetary policy committee to gain a reputation for inflationary toughness. I show a policy maker can have more or less incentive to build a reputation when part of a group. But, group policy making leads to higher expected social welfare. Not publishing individuals’ votes, raises the temptation to inflate and lowers expected social welfare. If the culture or rules of a central bank puts more weight on senior policy makers, the incentive to build a reputation is greater, but expected social welfare may be higher or lower.

This paper presents a dynamic, choice-theoretic general equilibrium model of capital accumulation in an open economy. Equilibria with and without capital mobility are described and compared. It is shown that neither is necessarily Pareto optimal and that an equilibrium with free trade in capital does not Pareto-dominate an equilibrium with autarky. The effects of restricting capital flows by taxing foreign investment earnings are discussed. It is seen that there will be no agreement within a country as to what constitutes an optimal tax. 1.

There is an extensive empirical literature on political business cycles, but its theoretical foundations are grounded in pre-rational expectations macroeconomic theory. Here we show that electoral cycles in taxes, government spending and money growth can be modeled as an equilibrium signaling process. The cycle is driven by temporary information asymmetries which can arise if, for example, the government has more current information on its performance in providing for national defence. Incumbents cheat least when their private information is either extremely favourable or extremely unfavourable. An exogeneous increase in the incumbent party's popularity does not necessarily imply a damped policy cycle.