Using a new instrumental variable strategy, we examine whether bilateral development aid increases military expenditure in recipient countries. The instrument is the interaction of donor government fractionalization and the probability of receiving aid. The dataset includes new data on military...

How globalisation influences social expenditure has been examined for industrialized countries. Globalisation has often been shown to be positively associated with social expenditure in established industrialized countries, a finding that corroborates the compensation hypothesis. Scholars have...

The nexus between corruption and economic growth has been examined for a long time. Many empirical studies measured corruption by the reversed Transparency International’s Perception of Corruption Index (CPI) and ignored that the CPI was not comparable over time. The CPI is comparable over...

How much additional tax revenue can the government generate by increasing labor income taxes? In this paper we provide a quantitative answer to this question, and study the importance of the progressivity of the tax schedule for the ability of the government to generate tax revenues. We develop...

n this paper we argue that very high marginal labor income tax rates are an effective tool for social insurance even when households have preferences with high labor supply elasticity, make dynamic savings decisions, and policies have general equilibrium effects. To make this point we construct...

The recent public debt crisis in most developed economies implies an urgent need for increasing tax revenues or cutting government spending. In this paper we study the importance of household heterogeneity and the progressivity of the labor income tax schedule for the ability of the government...

In this paper we characterize quantitatively the optimal mix of progressive income taxes and education subsidies in a model with endogeneous human capital formation, borrowing constraints, income risk and incomplete financial markets. Progressive labor income taxes provide social insurance...