Anastasios Karatounias

Dr Anastasios Karantounias


Associate Professor of Economics
PhD in Economics, New York University

About

Areas of specialism

Macroeconomics; Fiscal policy; Monetary policy

Research

Research interests

Teaching

Publications

Anastasios G. Karantounias (2013)Managing pessimistic expectations and fiscal policy, In: Theoretical Economics8(1)pp. 193-231 Econometric Society

This paper studies the design of optimal fiscal policy when a government that fully trusts the probability model of government expenditures faces a fearful public that forms pessimistic expectations. We identify two forces that shape our results. On the one hand, the government has an incentive to concentrate tax distortions on events that it considers unlikely relative to the pessimistic public. On the other hand, the endogeneity of the public's expectations gives rise to a novel motive for expectation management that aims toward the manipulation of equilibrium prices of government debt in a favorable way. These motives typically act in opposite directions and induce persistence to the optimal allocation and the tax rate.

Anastasios G. Karantounias (2023)Doubts about the model and optimal policy, In: Journal of economic theory210105643 Elsevier Inc

This paper analyzes optimal policy in setups where both the policymaker and the private sector have doubts about the probability model of uncertainty and form endogenous worst-case beliefs. There are two forces that shape optimal policy results: a) the manipulation of the endogenous beliefs of the private sector so that the forward-looking constraints that the policymaker is facing are relaxed, b) the discrepancy (if any) in pessimistic beliefs between a paternalistic policymaker and the private sector, which captures ultimately differences in welfare evaluation. I illustrate the methodology in an optimal fiscal policy problem and show that manipulation of beliefs materializes as an effort to make government debt cheaper through the endogenous beliefs of the household. This force may lead to either mitigation or amplification of the household's pessimism, depending on the problem's parameters. The policymaker's relative pessimism determines whether paternalism reinforces or opposes the price manipulation incentives.

Additional publications