We examine optimal taxation and social insurance if insurance markets are imperfect. This requires the development of a theory of labor supply under uncertainty. We show that the case for social insurance is not generally reinforced by adverse selection in insurance markets as social insurance...

I test if parties matter with respect to the allocation of public expenditures in Germany. Considering the allocation of rights and duties due to the federal structure, two econometric models are estimated. First, a SURE model analyses spending at the federal level for the period from 1950 to...

This paper examines the effects of political determinants on the allocation of public expenditures. Analyzing an OECD panel from 1990 to 2004, a SURE model controls for the contemporaneous correlation between the different expenditure categories (COFOG). I find that left governments set other...

This paper examines how policy affects social expenditures. Analyzing an OECD panel from 1980 to 2003, five political variables are tested: Election- and pre-election years, the ideological party composition of the governments, the number of coalition partners and the fact, if the ruling...

We study how website defaults affect consumer behavior in the domain of charitable giving. In a field experiment that was conducted on a large platform for making charitable donations over the web, we exogenously vary the default options in two distinct choice dimensions. The first pertains to...

We analyze empirically the optimal design of social insurance and assistance programs when families obtain insurance by making labor supply choices for both spouses. For this purpose, we specify a structural life-cycle model of the labor supply and savings decisions of singles and married...

Many developing countries around the world apply progressive water tariffs, often structured in the form of discretely increasing block tariffs (IBTs). These tariffs have been criticized in the welfare economic literature due to their perceived inefficiency: many of the prices charged under IBTs...

The paper compares non-cooperative commodity taxation under the destination and origin principles under a variety of different assumptions about market structure. We consider a model of international duopoly with either quantity or price competition of firms and either segmented or integrated...

This paper shows that the welfare dominance of ad valorem over unit taxes under imperfect competition, extends to the Dixit-Stiglitz framework with differentiated products, entry and love of variety. This contrasts against findings by Anderson et al. (J Public Econ, 2001) made in a similar...

We analyze non-cooperative commodity taxation in a two-country trade model characterized by monopolistic competition and international firm and capital mobility. In this setting, taxes in one country affect foreign welfare through the relocation of mobile firms and through changes in the rents...