Empirically, disincentive effects on work of generous welfare state arrangements tend to appear with a substantial time lag. One explanation is that norms concerning work and benefit dependency delay such effects. We model altruistic parents' economic incentives for instilling such work norms in...

This paper analyzes the interplay between social norms and economic incentives in the context of work decisions in the modern welfare state. We assume that to live off one's own work is a social norm, and that the larger the population share adhering to this norm, the more intensely it is felt...

This paper offers a reappraisal of the inflation-unemployment tradeoff, based on ?frictional growth,? describing the interplay between nominal frictions and money growth. When the money supply grows in the presence of price inertia (due to staggered wage contracts with time discounting), the...

Appropriate policies to address the problem of toxic assets should act as automatic stabilizers, so that institutions who toxic assets turn out to be worthless receive more public support than institutions whose toxic assets have value. Furthermore, such policies should be frugal in their...

Now, at the end of the 20th century, many OECD countries face serious problems in achieving both prosperity and social cohesion. One important - and sadly neglected - source of these problems are the very policy systems that are meant to address them. I will argue that these policy systems -...

This manifesto challenges a pernicious orthodoxy that has gripped Europe's policy makers. It is that demand- and supply-side policies must have different aims, that a limited number of supply-side policies are to be devoted to fighting unemployment, and that demand management (and particularly...