We show that once interfamily exchanges are considered, Becker's rotten kids mechanism has some remarkable implications that have gone hitherto unnoticed. Specifically, we establish that Cornes and Silva's (1999) result of efficiency in the contribution game amongst siblings extends to a setting...

This paper studies the optimal non linear income tax of couples. We build a general unitary model of labor supply and allow multidimensional heterogeneity in a discrete type framework. We concentrate our analysis on the resulting intra-family labor allocation of labor supplies and show that this...

This paper provides a unified treatment of externalities associated with fertility and human capital accumulation as they relate to pension systems. It considers as overlapping generations model in which every generation consists of high earners and low earners with the proportion of types being...

This paper shows that the design of education policy involves a potential conflict between welfare and social mobility. We consider a setting in which social mobility is maximized under the least elitist public education system, whereas welfare maximization calls for the most elitist system. We...

When accidental bequests signal otherwise unobservable individual characteristics such as productivity and longevity, the tax administration should partition the population into two groups: One consisting of people who do not receive an inheritance and the other of those who do. The first tagged...

This paper links the two nascent economic literatures on social networks and cultural assimilation by investigating the evolution of population attributes in a simple model where agents are influenced by their acquaintances. The main conclusion of the analysis is that attributes converge to a...

This paper uses an endogenous-growth model with overlapping generations to explore the connection between fiscal federalism and economic growth. The analysis shows that federalism, which allows public-good levels to be tailored to suit the differing demands of young and old consumers, who live...

This paper presents a simple model of airline schedule competition that circumvents the complexities of the spatial approach used in earlier papers. Consumers choose between two duopoly carriers, each of which has evenly spaced flights, by comparing the combinations of fare and expected schedule...

The fiscal decentralization impulse now sweeping the world often leads to partial decentralization, where subnational governments are funded by central transfers, rather than leading to full local autonomy. Despite the practical important of this arrangement, the literature contains no economic...

This paper analyzes slot-based approaches to management of airport congestion, using a model where airlines are asymmetric and internalize airport congestion. Under these circumstances, optimal congestion tolls differ across carriers, and since a slot-sale regime (with its uniform slot price)...