This paper assesses the effects of applying VAT or a sales tax on (intermediate or final) sales of the financial sector. It uses a CGE Model calibrated for a small open economy. It highlights the differentiated sectoral and redistributional effects of these taxes and shows the importance of the...

The growth of the Belgian economy since 1945 is surveyed with emphasis on the distinction between open and sheltered sectors. Relatively slow growth to around 1960 is explained by a move away from traditionally liberal industrial policies that began in the crisis of the 1930s, by the squeeze on...

Swedish census data and tax records reveal an astonishing wage compression; the Swedish skill premium fell by more than 30 percent between 1970 and 1990 while the U.S. skill premium, after an initial decline in the 1970s, rose by 8-10 percent. Since then both skill premia have increased by...

This Paper explores the effects of a menu of inter-generational fiscal policies (public debt financed by taxes, PAYG social security system and inheritance taxation) in an overlapping generations model with perfect altruism. It generalizes the model by Barro (1974) by introducing...

In many countries social security is a large fraction of the government budget. Why should this be so, given that at any moment in time the number of recipients of social security benefits is smaller than the number of contributors? More generally, what determines the size of social security? To...

Why does the largest US welfare programme select its recipients by their age, rather than by their earnings or wealth? In a dynamic efficient overlapping generation economy with earnings heterogeneity, we analyze a welfare system composed of a within-cohort redistribution scheme and an unfunded...

It is argued that a PAYGO system may have useful allocative functions in that it serves as an insurance against not having children and as an enforcement device for 'rotten kids' who are unwilling to pay their parents a pension. It is true that the system has a moral hazard effect in terms of...