This paper examines the economic foundations of some recently proposed criteria for evaluating the benefits of social programs. These criteria are appropriate for comparing a class of revenue-constant policies. They replace foundational principles of social opportunity costs with accounting...

The purpose of the present note is to explore the structure of optimal income taxation/redistribution in an economy where the welfare of individuals depends in part on relative after-tax consumption, i.e., we specify individual welfare as a function of absolute and relative after-tax...

We study the effects of welfare generosity on international migration using reforms of immigrant welfare benefits in Denmark. The first reform, implemented in 2002, lowered benefits for non-EU immigrants by about 50%, with no changes for natives or EU immigrants. The policy was later repealed...

The extent to which households can self-insure and the government can help them to do so depends on the wage risk that they face and their family structure. We study wage risk in the UK and show that the persistence and riskiness of wages depends on one's age and position in the wage...