European governments aim to raise labour supply, cut unemployment and, at the same time, maintain social cohesion. Yet, economists have stressed the trade-off between these objectives. This paper reviews the key policy insights from optimal tax theory to identify options for reform in the...

This paper uses the exogenous variation caused by the Dutch tax reform of 2001 to investigate how married women react to financial incentives.<font face="CMR10" size="3"><font face="CMR10" size="3">Among OECD countries, the Netherlands has average female labor force participation, but by far the highest rate of part-time work. Our main conclusion is...</font></font>

What drives migration and remittance behaviour in South Africa, and what are the implications for public policy? This paper evaluates existing empirical evidence, posits a simple theoretical model and undertakes a fresh evaluation using longitudinal data spanning 1993 to 2004 from KwaZula-Natal...

In this paper we analyse the consequences of replacing government subsidies with a graduate tax (GT) or income contingent loan (ICL) system for the financing of higher education. Both these systems are directed towards solving capital and insurance market failures. We constructed an empirically...

Increases in inequality between low and high-skilled workers are likely to affect welfare state policies in upcoming decades. Demand for redistribution puts pressure on marginal income-tax rates and other social security measures. We come to this conclusion by confronting expected supply and...

This paper assesses how the system of Dutch collective arrangements redistributes between the rich and the poor. It incorporates the full life cycle in the measurements, rather than only the annual effects, and includes a larger part of the arrangements than is usually the case. The...

This paper shows how to derive a complete set of optimality conditions characterising the solution to a dynamic optimal income tax problem in the spirit of Mirrlees (1971), under the assumption that a 'first-order' approach to incentive compatibility is valid.  The method relies on constructing...

There has been a dramatic surge in Islamic participation and values since the 1970s.  We propose a theory of the contemporary Islamic revival based upon two forms of relative deprivation - envy and unfulfilled aspirations.  To analyze these motivations, a behavioral model of religion is...

This paper considers the problem of determining the extent of any state dependencies in women`s labor supply behavior. Employment outcomes are modeled using a dynamic multinomial choice framework including persistent unobserved heterogeneity with a relatively general distribution. In order to...

Population aging and the burden it imposes on state finances is one of the major economic challenges governments around the world face. Responses are formulated in terms of either increasing employment (for example by raising the retirement age) or increasing productivity (investment in...