Chile approved in early 2008 the replacement of her two current non-contributory subsidies for the old poor for a unified program with a pioneering design, with phase-in ending in 2012. This paper describes the political economy of this reform and evaluates it with regards to efficiency and...

The paper describes Chile’s pension reform of 1980, which replaced the existing pay-as-you-go public pension programs by a new funded pension program managed by private companies (the “AFP´s”). It comments on the main results of this reform so far, and identifies the current challenges...

Fertility has long been declining in industrialised countries and the existence of public pension systems is considered as one of the causes. This paper is the first to provide detailed evidence based on historical data on the mechanism by which a public pension system depresses fertility. Our...

A large literature on ex ante moral hazard in income insurance emphasizes that the individual can affect the probability of an income loss by choice of lifestyle and hence, the degree of risk-taking. The much smaller literature on moral hazard ex post mainly analyzes how a quot;moral hazard...

When based on perceived rather than on objective income distributions, the Meltzer-Richards hypothesis and the POUM hypothesis work quite well empirically: there exists a positive link between perceived inequality or perceived upward mobility and the extent of redistribution in democratic...

We show that a transfer targeting a minority of the population is sustained by majority voting, however small the minority targeted, when the probability to receive the transfer is decreasing and concave in income. We apply our framework to the French social housing program and obtain that...

In a model with endogenous fertility and labor supply three instruments of family policies are analyzed: child benefits, subsidies for external child care, and parental leave payments. We compare the impact on the quantity and quality of children, the secondary earner’s labor supply and...

This report provides an overview of Australia’s labour market policies, with a focus on income support benefits and employment assistance for people of working age. It traces historical developments partly since 1990 and since 1978 in the case of some data series...<BR>Ce rapport donne une vue...

This report examines the performance of public employment services and the effectiveness of activation strategies in Switzerland. It covers the role of the key actors in labour market policy, the placement function of the Public Employment Service (PES), the structure of out-of-work benefits and...

The Japanese labour market is characterised by high employment rates for men and older workers, and a low unemployment rate. Over the past two decades, female participation has risen, while disparities in the labour market conditions of workers have grown. Further efforts are needed to promote...