We develop a model of education where individuals face educational risk. Successfully entering the skilled labor sector depends on individual effort in education and public resources, but educational risk still causes (income) inequality. We show that an optimal public policy consists of...

This paper concerns optimal redistributive income taxation and provision of a public input good in a two-type model with a minimum wage policy implemented for the low-ability type, where firms may use some of their resources for outsourcing by locating part of the production process abroad. Our...

In this model of education, where individuals are exposed both to educational risk and to wage risk within the skilled sector, successful graduation depends both on individual effort to study and on public resources. We show that insuring the present risks is a dichotomic task: Wage risk is...

In a model with ex-ante homogenous households, earnings risk and a general earnings function, we derive the optimal linear labor tax rate and optimal linear education subsidies. The optimal income tax trades off social insurance against incentives to work and to invest in human capital....

We analyze the following questions associated with flexible outsourcing under partly imperfect dual domestic labour markets, where high skilled workers participate in firm's profit via profit sharing: How does the implementation of profit sharing influence flexible outsourcing? What is the...

Policies of lowering carbon demand may aggravate rather than alleviate climate change (green paradox). In a two-period three-country general equilibrium model with finite endowment of fossil fuel one country enforces an emissions cap in the first or second period. When that cap is tightened the...

This paper concerns optimal income taxation in a two-country OLG economy, where each country is characterized by asymmetric information between the government and the private sector, and where one of the countries outsources part of its production to the other. In the country whose firms...

In a multi-country general equilibrium economy with mobile capital and rigid-wage unemployment, countries may differ in capital endowments, production technologies and rigid wages. Governments tax capital at the source to maximize national welfare. They account for tax base responses to their...

This paper analyzes optimal linear taxes on labor income and savings in a standard two-period life-cycle model with endogenous leisure demands in both periods and non-insurable income risks. Households are subject to skill shocks in both periods of the life-cycle. We allow for completely general...

What are the impacts of labor tax reform on wage setting and employment to keep the relative tax burden per low-skilled and high-skilled workers constant in the case of heterogenous domestic labor markets, i.e. imperfect competition in low-skilled labor and perfect competition in high-skilled...