Social security programs generally seek to provide insurance and to reduce poverty and inequality. Providing insurance requires little redistribution. But reducing inequality and alleviating poverty do require redistribution. To reduce inequality, programs must redistribute income, but...

The paper analyses the efficiency and the distributional effects of eliminating a tariff in a protected sector, in a Heckscher-Ohlin model of trade with costs of adjustment. The tariff can be eliminated at the onset or after a while. In case of postponing it the government may pre-announce the...

We argue that societies sometimes choose not to enforce the law to gain 'flexibility'. Especially developing countries face a dilemma between discretion and commitment to only partially-contingent rules. Rules are good for incentives, but discretion may be more 'flexible'. We embed this dilemma...

Incomplete and highly fragmented work histories threaten to leave many contributors of the pension schemes in Latin America without the minimum pension guarantee or even without access to the ordinary pension. We propose a methodology to assess this risk, identify vulnerable groups and study...

The authors show that labor market policies and institutions affect the effectiveness of economic reform programs. They compare annual growth rates across 119 countries, using data from 449 World Bank adjustment credits and loans between 1980 and 1996. The results indicate that countries with...

It is usually accepted that a pure NDC scheme is not adequate to protect individuals against the risk of poverty in old age, because it does not incorporate any redistribution of the system`s revenue. However, we show that insufficient coverage and weak social protection can be more serious...