To the layperson, the upward trend in European unemployment is related to the slowdown in economic growth. We argue that the layperson’s view is correct. The increase in European unemployment and the slowdown in economic growth are related because they stem from a common cause: an excessively...

We assess the information spillovers generated by the exchange of job-related information within networks of fellow workers exploiting administrative records covering all employment relationships established in a specific local labor market over 20 years. We recover individual-specific networks...

This paper studies optimal taxation of entrepreneurial capital and financial assets in economies with private information. Returns to entrepreneurial capital are risky and depend on entrepreneurs’ effort, which is not observed. The presence of idiosyncratic risk in capital returns implies that...

We study the impact of tax competition on equilibrium taxes and welfare, focusing on the jurisdictional fragmentation of federations. In a representative-agent model of fiscal federalism, fragmentation among jurisdictions with benevolent tax-setting authorities unambiguously reduces welfare. If,...

The paper analyses the revenue-raising, distributional and incentive effects of the personal tax system in Hungary from the start of the transitional tax reforms of 1988, and develops methods for estimating marginal indirect taxes. It evaluates the distributional impact of revenue-neutral...

We develop a model of common agency with complete information and general preferences with non-transferable utility, and prove that the principals’ Nash equilibrium in truthful strategies implements an efficient action. We apply this theory to construct a positive model of public finance,...

We develop a framework for optimal taxation when agents can earn their income both in traditional activities, where private and social products coincide, and in rent-seeking activities, where private returns exceed social returns either because they involve the capture of pre-existing rents or...

There is a tremendous diversity in the level and time-series pattern of the self-employment rate across countries. After documenting this fact with cross-section and time-series data on industrialized and lesser-developed countries, this paper presents and tests a series of hypotheses concerning...

We show that task juggling, i.e., the spreading of effort across too many active projects, decreases the performance of workers, raising the chances of low throughput, long duration of projects and exploding backlogs. Individual speed of job completion cannot be explained only in terms of...

This paper presents new evidence that increases in college enrollment lead to a decline in the average quality of college graduates between 1960 and 2000, resulting in a decrease of 6 percentage points in the college premium. We show that although a standard demand and supply framework can...