This Paper estimates the welfare and distributional impact of two types of welfare reform in 14 member countries of the European Union. The reforms are revenue neutral and financed by an overall and uniform increase in marginal tax rates on earnings. The first reform distributes the additional...

The paper examines the possible effects of introducing a large-scale welfare reform in Sweden, namely, the introduction of comprehensive welfare accounts. Under this policy, individuals make mandatory contributions to accounts, which they can top up with voluntary contributions. In return,...

Is there an economic rationale for pronatalist policies? In this paper we propose and analyze a particular market failure that may lead to inefficiently low equilibrium fertility and therefore to a need for government intervention. The friction we investigate is related to the ownership of...

The high labor supply elasticity in an indivisible-labor model with employment lotteries emerges also without lotteries when individuals must instead choose career lengths. The more elastic are earnings to accumulated working time, the longer is a worker's career. Negative (positive)...

In many countries pension systems involve some form of earnings test; i.e., an individual’s benefits are reduced if he has labour income. This paper examines whether or not such earning tests emerge when pension system and income tax are optimally designed. We use a simple model with...

This paper studies the determination through majority voting of a pension scheme when society consists of far-sighted and myopic individuals. All individuals have the same basic preferences but myopics tend to adopt a short term view (instant gratification) when dealing with retirement saving....

In this Paper, we study the role of subsidies to fertility in ensuring the political viability of unfunded social security (SS). In our model, agents are heterogeneous in age and income. Young generations confront promises made previously by older generations, and in turn choose current levels...

Generous early retirement provisions account for a large proportion of the drop in the labour force participation of elderly workers. The aim of this paper is to provide a political-economic explanation of the wide spread adoption of early retirement. We suggest that the political support for...

This paper studies the design of retirement and disability policies. It illustrates the often observed exit from the labour force of healthy workers through disability insurance schemes. Two types of individuals, disabled and leisure-prone ones, have the same disutility for labour and cannot be...

In this paper we re-examine poverty among working class households in inter-war London using the newly computerized records from the New Survey of London Life and Labour (NSLLL), a survey of living standards in London undertaken in 1929–31. First, we examine how the use of different poverty...