We explore voluntary participation in pension arrangements. Individuals only participate when participation is more attractive than autarky. The bene􀏐it of participation is that risks can be shared with future generations. We apply our analysis to a pay-as-you-go system, a funded system...

This discussion paper resulted in an article in the <I>Journal of Development Economics</I> (2013). Volume 103, pages 43-51.<P> To raise school attendance, many programs in developing countries eliminate orreduce private contributions to education. This paper documents an unintendednegative effect of such...</p></i>

College education is not only an investment; for many people it also generates consumption benefits. If these benefits are normal goods, then the rich attend college at higher rates than the poor. Furthermore, the marginal poor student is smarter than the marginal rich student. Colleges aiming...

The paper examines the effect of heterogeneity in individual human capital formation on cross-country income inequality. It considers a two-country model of overlapping generation heterogeneous economies with the following features: (1) individuals are heterogeneous with respect to inborn...

We argue that promoting education may be a means to reduceincome inequality. When workers of different skill levels areimperfect substitutes in production, an increase in the level ofhuman capital in the economy reduces the return to education.Hence, a given compression of after-tax incomes can...

The paper studies the effects of cross-country differences in the productionprocess of human capital on income distribution and growth. Our overlapping gen-erations economy has the following features: (1) consumers are heterogenous withrespect to parental human capital and wealth; (2)...

We apply theories of capital market failure to ana1yzeoptima1 financing of risky higher education. In the market solution,students can only finance their education through debt. There isunderinvestment in human capita1, because some students with socia1lyprofitable investments in human capita1...

Much attention has been paid to the influence of the institutional form of waste collection on costs. We extend this literature in three directions by including the unit-based pricing system. First, we show that unit-based pricing systems are more important from a cost-minimizing point of view...

This paper presents an approach for the estimation of welfare effects of tax policy changes under heterogeneity in consumer preferences. The approach is applied to evaluate the welfare effects of current tax advantages for electric vehicles supplied as fringe benefits by employers. Drawing on...

In this paper we compare the new satisfaction evaluation approach, developed inthe nineties by Oswald ,Clark , Blanchflower and others with the older incomeevaluation (IEQ) approach, developed by Van Praag and Kapteyn in theseventies of the previous century. We find that both approaches yield...