We study the interactions between capital income tax and social security privatization in the context of rising longevity. In an economy with idiosyncratic income shocks, redistributive defined benefit social security provides some insurance against income uncertainty. This insurance comes at...

We study interactions between progressive labor taxation and social security reform. Increasing longevity puts fiscal strain that necessitates the social security reform. The current social security is redistributive, thus providing (at least partial) insurance against idiosyncratic income...

Many countries consider rising fertility through pro-family policies as a solution to the fiscal pressure stemming from longevity. However, an increased number of births implies immediate private costs and only delayed public benefits of younger and larger population. We propose using an...

We develop an OLG model with realistic assumptions about longevity to analyze the welfare effects of raising the retirement age. We look at a scenario where an economy has a pay-as-you-go defined benefit scheme and compare it to a scenario with defined contribution schemes (funded or notional)....

We model how unemployment benefit sanctions - benefit reductions that are imposed if unemployed do not comply with job search guidelines - affect unemployment. In our analysis we find that not only micro effects concerning the behavior of individual unemployed workers are relevant, but also...

We study the welfare effects of earnings testing flat-rate old-age benefits in a quantitative overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic labor income risk. In our model economy, even a moderate earnings testing reduces individuals' expected lifetime utility, whenever other taxes are taken...

This paper examines the welfare loss of import restrictions on bananas in Australia and whether the import restrictions have turned into a particular form of export promotion. We set up a model in which there is free domestic entry, with banana producers accepting losses in normal years, off-set...

There is a strong suggestion from the existing literature that volunteering improves the wellbeing of those who give up their time to help others, but much of it is correlational and not causal. In this paper, we estimate the wellbeing benefits from volunteering for England's National Health...

Government policies are encouraging older workers to delay retirement, which may curb younger workers' career advancement. We study a Dutch reform that raised the retirement age by 13 months and nearly tripled employment at age 66. Using monthly linked employer-employee data, we show that...

We study the welfare implications of employment protection for older workers, exploiting recent bans on mandatory retirement across Canadian provinces. Using linked employer- employee tax data, we show that the bans cause large and similar reductions in job separation rates and retirement...