The labor-leisure distortion of a pay-as-you-go pension system can be reduced through a stronger tax-benefit link or Bismarck pension system. Distortions of the fertility decision can be reduced through the introduction of a stronger child-benefit or child pension system.Within our optimal...

A pay-as-you-go pension scheme is associated with positive externalities of having children and providing them with human capital. In a framework with heterogeneity in productivity, and stochastic and endogenous investment in fertility and education, we discuss internalization policies...

Increasing longevity causes an upward trend in the dependency ratio in many countries. This raises concerns about the financial sustainability of social security schemes, and reform initiatives and proposals abound. It is shown that a fundamental policy choice inevitably arises since a given...

This paper discusses alternative ways to deal with the positive externalities of having children in a pay-as-you-go pension system. Family allowances are compared to introducing a fertility-related component into the pension formula. In an endogenous labor supply setting, both instruments are...

Fertility has long been declining in industrialised countries and the existence of public pension systems is considered as one of the causes. This paper is the first to provide detailed evidence based on historical data on the mechanism by which a public pension system depresses fertility. Our...

This study investigates how the first childbirth affects the wage processes of highly attached women. We estimate a flexible fixed effects wage regression model extended with post-birth fixed effects by the control function approach. Register data on West Germany are used and we exploit the...

We present an analysis of the share of public ownership in the product market in the OECD countries from 1974 to 2007. Despite much has been said on the broad topic of reforms and regulation, a sector-specific insight is missing. We replicate the analysis of Galasso (2014) by sector of activity...

Utilizing panel data for 19 OECD countries we find suppor t for the hypothesis that a greater degree of product variety relative to the US helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from 6-digit OECD export...

We consider a bargaining model in which husband and wife decide on the allocation of time and disposable income. Since her bargaining power would go down otherwise more strongly, the wife agrees to have a child only if the husband also leaves the labor market for a while. The daddy months...

Previous studies report a wide range of estimates for how female labor supply responds to childcare prices. We shed new light on this question using a reform that raised the prices of public daycare. Parents respond by reducing public daycare and increasing childcare at home. Parents also reduce...