This paper investigates equilibria in a labor market where firms post wage/tenure contracts and risk-averse workers, both employed and unemployed, search for better paid job opportunities. Different firms typically offer different contracts. Workers accumulate general human capital through...

This paper reviews the literature on the effects of low steady-state inflation on wage formation, focusing on four different effects. First, under low inflation, downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) may prevent real wage cuts that would have happened had inflation been higher. Second, wages...

This paper presents the properties of optimal piecewise linear tax systems for two-earner households, based on joint and individual incomes respectively. A key contribution is the analysis of the interaction between second earner wage differences, variation in the price of child care and...

In this paper we model an OLG-economy where labour supply is endogenously determined and where we assume that there are two pension systems, namely, a pay-as-you-go system and a funded system. The main question is whether there is an equilibrium involving an old-age pensions system, partly...

This paper analyses optimal piecewise linear tax systems for two-earner households, based on joint and individual incomes respectively. It models the interaction between wage rates and variation in child care prices and productivities as determinants of across-household heterogeneity in second...

This paper investigates the inter-temporal structure of implicit taxes that arise in unfunded pension schemes. We demonstrate that these tax rates are declining over the life cycle. Using German micro-data for men and married women we estimate periodic wage elasticities of labour supply in order...

Green tax reform is unpopular because, typically, the poor are hurt most by the higher prices of carbon-intensive commodities. If revenues from a carbon tax are recycled, it may be feasible to gain popular support for green tax reform. To investigate this, we estimate an EASI demand system from...

We analyse a model in which families may either be “traditional” single-earner with caring for the child at home or “modern” double-earner households using market child care. Family policies may favour either the one or the other group, like market care subsidies vs. cash for care....

In this paper we investigate the effects of tax competition in a simple endogenous growth model with elastic labor supply. Our analysis focuses on two issues. First, we show that all taxes, i.e. on capital, labor, and consumption, are harmful for growth. Second, we derive the optimal tax policy....