This paper provides a life-cycle framework for weighing up the insurance value of disability benefi ts against the incentive cost. Within this framework, we estimate the life-cycle risks that individuals face in the US, as well as the parameters governing the disability insurance program, using...

This paper analyses the trade-off between the incentive effects of increased uncertainty and the welfare benefits of risk-sharing in the design of optimal tax schedules. We use numerical methods to characterise the tax schedule and to give comparative static results of changing risk aversion,...

We specify a structural life-cycle model of consumption, labour supply and job mobility in an economy with search frictions that allows us to distinguish between different sources of risk and to estimate their effects. The sources of risk are shocks to productivity, job destruction, the process...

This paper concerns the decomposition of income risk into permanent and transitory components using repeated cross-section data on income and consumption. Our focus is on the detection of changes in the magnitudes of variances of permanent and transitory risks. A new approximation to the optimal...

Using new data from the Understanding Society: COVID 19 survey collected in April 2020, we show how the aggregate shock caused by the pandemic affects individuals across the distribution. The survey collects data from existing members of the Under-standing Society panel survey who have been...