We study the effects of German unification in a model with capital accumulation, skill differences and a welfare state. We argue that this event is similar to a mass migration of low-skilled agents holding no capital into a foreign country. Absent a welfare state, we observe an investment boom,...

Why was England first? And why Europe? We present a probabilistic model that builds on big-push models by Murphy, Shleifer and Vishny (1989), combined with hierarchical preferences. The interaction of exogenous demographic factors (in particular the English low-pressure variant of the European...

In this paper we study the welfare impact of alternative tax schemes on labor and capital. We evaluate the e_ect of lowering capital income taxes on the distribution of wealth in a model with heterogeneous agents, restricting our attention to policies with constant tax rates. We calibrate and...

This paper provides a quantitative evaluation of the intra--cohort redistributive elements of the United States social security system in the context of a computable general equilibrium model. I determine how the well--being of individuals that differ across {\sl gender, race} and {\sl...