The evolution of the ratio of direct taxation (characterized by progressive rates) over indirect and payroll taxation (characterized by flat rates) is examined together with its distributional consequences for the Bottom 50%, Middle 40% and Top 10% shares of income. Oscillations of this ratio...

Primary education in India is a development question of a unique magnitude, and the delivery of education by Indian states is often suspected to be marred by political haggling and corruption. Using rich administrative school-level panel data across Indian states, we test for electoral cycles in...

This paper analyzes the occurrence of political budget cycles in 604 West German cities between 1975 and 2007. Due to the idiosyncratic timing of state and local elections, the budgetary changes before elections at two tiers of the federalist government can be separately estimated and can also...

The European Employment Strategy has set the goal of raising the retirement age of workers in the EU through a strategy of "active aging." Yet despite some progress over the last decade, empirical data show persistent diversity across EU member states. Institutional arrangements of social and...

We study whether a higher share of immigrant pupils affects the school performance of natives using aggregate multi-country data from PISA. We find evidence of a negative and statistically significant relationship. The size of the estimated effect is small: doubling the share of immigrant pupils...

Short-time work compensation aims at reducing lay-offs by allowing employers to temporarily reduce hours worked while compensating workers for the induced loss of income. These programs are now widespread in the OECD countries, notably following the 2008-2009 crisis. This paper discusses the...

Existing growth research provides little explanation for the very large differences in long-run growth performance across OECD countries. We show that cognitive skills can account for growth differences within the OECD, whereas a range of economic institutions and quantitative measures of...

We test whether the growth experience of a sample of 21 OECD countries over the past three decades is more consistent with the augmented Solow model or the Uzawa-Lucas model, by exploiting the different non-linear restrictions implied by them as regards the relationship between factor shares and...

This paper estimates the effect of minimum wage regulation in 16 OECD countries, 1970-2008. Our treatment is motivated by Neumark and Wascher's (2004) seminal cross-country study using panel methods to estimate minimum wage effects among teenagers and young adults. Apart from the longer time...

Payroll taxes represent a major distortionary influence of governments on labor markets. This paper examines the role of payroll taxation and the social safety net for cyclical fluctuations in a nonmonetary economy with labor market frictions and unemployment insurance, when the latter is only...