This paper presents a data set that improves the measurement of educational attainment for a broad group of countries. We extend our previous estimates of educational attainment for the population over age 15 and over age 25 up to 1995 and provide projections for 2000. We discuss the estimation...

Our panel data set on educational attainment has been updated for 146 countries from 1950 to 2010. The data are disaggregated by sex and by 5-year age intervals. We have improved the accuracy of estimation by using information from consistent census data, disaggregated by age group, along with...

In this paper we argue that very high marginal labor income tax rates are an effective tool for social insurance even when households have preferences with high labor supply elasticity, make dynamic savings decisions, and policies have general equilibrium effects. To make this point we construct...

For U.S. annual data that include WWII, the estimated multiplier for temporary defense spending is 0.4-0.5 contemporaneously and 0.6-0.7 over two years. If the change in defense spending is "permanent" (gauged by Ramey's defense-news variable), the multipliers are higher by 0.1-0.2. The...

In this paper we quantitatively characterize the optimal capital and labor income tax in an overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic, uninsurable income shocks, where households also differ permanently with respect to their ability to generate income. The welfare criterion we employ is...

Optimal debt management can be thought of in three stages. First, if taxes are lump sum and the other conditions for Ricardian equivalence hold, then the division of government financing between debt and taxes is irrelevant, and the whole level of public debt is indeterminate from an optimal-tax...

This paper computes the optimal progressivity of the income tax code in a dynamic general equilibrium model with household heterogeneity in which uninsurable labor productivity risk gives rise to a nontrivial income and wealth distribution. A progressive tax system serves as a partial substitute...

Can public insurance through redistributive income taxation improve the allocation of risk in an economy in which private risk sharing is limited? The answer depends crucially on the fundamental friction that limits private risk sharing in the first place. If risk sharing is incomplete because...

How much additional tax revenue can the government generate by increasing labor income taxes? In this paper we provide a quantitative answer to this question, and study the importance of the progressivity of the tax schedule for the ability of the government to generate tax revenues. We develop...