In the aftermath of the financial and economic crisis, large shares of working-age individuals in Italy either did not work or only to a limited extent. As the employment rate bottomed out in 2013, 32% were without employment during the entire year, and a further 7% had weak labour-market...

The paper traces labor market reforms over the last four decades. It provides estimates of retirement incentives for a selected set of typical worker profiles across time and socio-economic groups and links these series to the labor market performance in Belgium. The results show that the...

Australia's economy and labour market have escaped a dramatic downturn following the global financial economic crisis. Yet, a substantial share of working-age Australians either were not working or worked only to a limited extent as the global recovery gathered pace between 2013 and 2014. 18%...

Daughters are the principal caregivers of their dependent parents. In this paper, we study long-term care (LTC) choices by bargaining families with mixed- or same-gender siblings. LTC care can be provided either informally by children, or formally at home or in an institution. A social norm...

Higher replacement rates often imply higher levels of absenteeism, yet even in generous welfare economies, private sick pay is provided in addition to the public sick pay. Why? Using comparative workplace data for the UK and Norway we show that the higher level of absenteeism in Norway compared...

We study the impact of a mandatory activation program for young welfare recipients in the Netherlands. Introduced at the end of 2009, the goal of the program was to prevent so-called NEETs (individuals not in employment, education or training). We use a large administrative data set for the...

The tax regimes applied to couples in many countries including the US, France, and Germany imply either a marriage penalty or a marriage bonus. We study how they affect the decision to get married by considering two potential spouses who play a marriage proposal game. At the end of the game they...

The rising importance of bequests as a source of personal income lead to renewed interest in the taxation of wealth transfers. Empirical evidence on distortionary effects of bequest taxation is relatively scarce. On the basis of administrative data for Germany, this paper assesses the extent to...

This paper investigates the behavioral responses of coupled men and women to a cash transfer program in Uruguay - Asignaciones Familiares-Plan de Equidad (AFAM-PE) -, by analyzing its effect on labor market responses, marital dissolution, and the decision-making process regarding the use of...

We document contemporaneous differences in the aggregate labor supply of married couples across 17 European countries and the US. Based on a model of joint household decision making, we quantify the contribution of international differences in non-linear labor income taxes and consumption taxes...