We examine the limiting behavior of cooperative and noncooperative fiscal policies as countries' market power goes to zero. We show that these policies converge if countries raise revenues through lump-sum taxation. However, if there are unremovable domestic distortions, such as distorting taxes, there can be gains to coordination even when a single country's policy cannot affect world prices. These results differ from the received wisdom in the optimal tariff literature. The key distinction is that, contrary to the tariff literature, the spending decisions of governments are explicitly modeled.

We propose a definition of time-consistent policy for infinite-horizon economies with competitive private agents. Allocations and policies are defined as functions of the history of past policies. A sustainable equilibrium is a sequence of history-contingent policies and allocations that satisfy certain sequential optimality conditions for the government and for private agents. We provide a complete characterization of the sustainable equilibrium outcomes for a variant of Fischer's model of capital taxation. We also relate our work to recent developments in the theory of repeated games.

V. V. Chari, Ravi Jagannathan, Larry Jones; Price Stability and Futures Trading in Commodities*, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 105, Issue 2, 1

We examine the limiting behavior of cooperative and noncooperative fiscal policies as countries' market power goes to zero. We show that these policies converge if countries raise revenues through lump-sum taxation. However, if there are unremovable domestic distortions, such as distorting taxes, there can be gains to coordination even when a single country's policy cannot affect world prices. These results differ from the received wisdom in the optimal tariff literature. The key distinction is that, contrary to the tariff literature, the spending decisions of governments are explicitly modeled.

The authors propose a definition of time-consistent policy for infinite-horizon economies with competitive private agents. Allocations and policies are defined as functions of the history of past policies. A sustainable equilibrium is a sequence of history-contingent policies and allocations that satisfy certain sequential optimality conditions for the government and for private agents. The authors provide a complete characterization of the sustainable equilibrium outcomes for a variant of Stanley Fischer's model of capital taxation. They also relate their work to recent developments in the theory of repeated games.