Does joint taxation disadvantage women? To answer that question, this paper begins byreviewing unitary and bargaining models of intrafamily allocation, and then discusses thedeterminants of "bargaining power" in a world without taxes...

The UK´s Equal Opportunities Commission has recently drawn attention to the hidden braindrain when women working part-time are employed in occupations below those for whichthey are qualified. These inferences were based on self-reporting...

Evidently, the benefit-structure of the unemployment insurance has a significant influence onprofits and trade union utility. We show for a wage bargaining model that a stronger earningsrelationship of unemployment benefits may reduce wages and increase employment. Thisraises the question as to...

Both raw intuition and past experience suggest that the success of an employment guaranteescheme (EGS) in safeguarding the welfare of the poor depends both on the wage itpromises, and the ease with which any worker can gain access. An EGS is thus at once awage guarantee and a rationing device....

This paper examines the effects of the Working Families´ Tax Credit (WFTC) on couples inBritain. We develop a simple model of household decisions which explicitly accounts for therole played by the tax and benefit system. Its main implications are then tested using paneldata from the British...

We build a theoretical model to study whether a minimum wage can be welfare-improving if itis implemented in conjunction with an optimized nonlinear income tax. We consider this issuein a framework where search frictions on the labor market generate unemployment. Workersdiffer in productivity...

An earlier study of wage agreements, reached in the Canadian unionized sector between1976-99, found that wage adjustment is characterized by downward nominal rigidity andsignificant spikes at zero. We extend this earlier approach to encompass the possibility ofreal as well as nominal wage...