A strong case for public provision of certain private goods has been established for an economy in which individuals have homogeneous preferences but differ in skill levels. There has been a critique of this model/mechanism arguing that heterogeneous preferences at a given skill level would...

We examine the optimal policy response to an exogenously given demographic shock. Such a shock affects negatively the financing of retirement pensions, and we use optimal fiscal policy in order to determine the optimal strategy of the social security administration. Our approach provides...

It has turned out to be difficult to adjust welfare-state arrangements to new circumstances. This paper emphasizes developments in the labor market and changes in the structure and preference of the family. The former include changes in demography, productivity growth and international linkages...

In an interesting and influential paper Robert Lucas (1993) considering the experience of East Asian small economies, suggests that on the job" learning could be the principal engine of their miraculous growth in the last 20 years. In this paper I develop an overlapping generation model where on...

We find evidence in the OECD cross-country data to support the Knightian view that non-diversifiable economic risks shape equilibrium entrepreneurship in an occupational choice model. Differential social insurance of entrepreneurship and labor risk is found to be statistically significant and...