Mandatory pension systems can have a negative impact on individual savings and labor supply decisions. In particular, defined benefit pension schemes that are not actuarially fair, can create incentives for early retirement, and therefore, reduce labor supply and the stock of human capital....

The issue of same-sex marriage legalization is increasingly part of the national political dialogue. This legalization would have a number of economic impacts, one of the most direct being a change in income tax payments, through the so-called marriage penalty. I estimate the effects of same-sex...

Using data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC)1994-2006, we examine the effect of child birth on fathers’ wage rates and labor supply in Japan. We also compare effects of fatherhood among different cohorts by dividing the JPSC sample into two birth year cohorts (born in or...

This paper examines the response of husbands' and wives' earnings to a tax reform in which husbands' and wives' tax rates changed independently, allowing me to examine the effect of both spouses' incentives on each spouse's behavior. I compare the results to those of more simplified econometric...

In the U.S. economy hours and productivity are negatively correlated, and volatility of hours is two times higher than volatility of productivity. In the standard one shock RBC model hours are positively correlated with productivity, and hours are two times less volatile than productivity. This...

Hundreds of papers have investigated how incentives and policies affect hours worked in the market. This paper examines how income taxes affect time allocation in the other two-thirds of the day. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1975 to 2004, we analyze the response of single...

In most OECD countries the gap between rich and poor has widened over the past decades. This paper analyzes whether and to what extent taxes and social transfers have contributed to this trend. Has the redistributive power of different social programs changed over time? The paper contributes to...

In this paper, we examine the old-age security hypothesis according to which parents rear children because they expect the latter to care for them in their later years. In developing countries where there are no perfect capital markets, children are usually viewed as a potential source of income...

The paper identifies the sustainable rate of return (to be credited on all account balances) for a generic Defined-Contribution pension scheme regardless of its degree of funding.

This study examines the effects of fiscal austerity, among other socioeconomic variables, on suicide rates in Greece over the period 1968-2011. Our results suggest that fiscal austerity, higher unemployment rates, negative economic growth and reduced fertility rates, significantly increase...