<p>There is so much hunger in the developing poor countries of the world that the extent of inequality calls for a re-examination of global resources distribution especially as it concerns global debt crisis. The debts and their servicing obligation worsen the condition of the poor. Their cancellation could grant some respite to these global poor. This is why the call for a total and unconditional cancellation of Third World debt becomes a moral imperative. This needs to be given a normative approach especially as most of the debts were said to have arisen from morally questionable contracts. The demand for their cancellation is therefore a demand for global justice viewed from the stand point of rectification and distribution.</p>

There is so much hunger in the developing poor countries of the world that the extent of inequality calls for a re-examination of global resources distribution especially as it concerns global debt crisis. The debts and their servicing obligation worsen the condition of the poor. Their cancellation could grant some respite to these global poor. This is why the call for a total and unconditional cancellation of Third World debt becomes a moral imperative. This needs to be given a normative approach especially as most of the debts were said to have arisen from morally questionable contracts. The demand for their cancellation is therefore a demand for global justice viewed from the stand point of rectification and distribution.

Esta tesis trata sobre cómo la autoridad fiscal debe fijar los impuestos distorsivos de manera óptima. El capítulo 1 analiza el problema de la política fiscal cuando el gobierno tiene un incentivo a hacer default con su deuda externa. El capítulo 2 trata sobre el problema de la política fiscal cuando los agentes no conocen cómo el gobierno fija las tasas impositivas. La principal conclusión que obtengo es que, en ambos contextos, el resultado de suavidad de las tasas, que es estándar en la literatura de imposición óptima, se rompe. Cuando los gobiernos no tienen una tecnología de compromiso, los impuestos responden a los incentivos de default; cuando los agentes poseen información parcial sobre el modelo subyacente de la economía, los impuestos dependen de sus expectativas sobre los mismos. / This thesis is about how fiscal authority should optimally set dissorting taxes. Chapter 1 deals with the optimal fiscal policy problem when the government has an incentive to default on external debt. Chapter 2 deals with the optimal fiscal policy problem when households do not know how government sets taxes. The main conclusion I get is that, in each of these two contexts, the tax smoothing result, which is the standars result in the optimal taxation literature, is broken. When governments do not have a commitment technology taxes respond to the incentives to default; when agents have partial information about the underlying economic model, taxes depend on their beliefs about it.