We study the effects on financial markets and real economic activity of changes in risk related to political events and policy announcements in Italy during the 2013-2019 period that saw the rise to power of populist parties. We focus on events that have implications for budgetary policy, debt...

Wildman (2021), who identifies "a clear association between income inequality [measured by the Gini coefficient] and COVID-19 cases and deaths," concludes that "a goal of government should be to reduce [income] inequalities and [thereby] improve [the COVID-19 outcomes /] underlying health of...

Economic theory predicts that military conscription is associated with static inefficiencies as well as with dynamic distortions of the accumulation of human and physical capital. Relative to an economy with an all-volunteer force, output levels and growth rates should be lower in countries that...

This paper provides a detailed analysis on the incidence of the tax structure on the labor market. To do so it goes beyond the traditional examination of the quot;levelquot; effect of the fiscal wedge and considers a quot;compositionquot; effect defined as a payroll tax bias (PTB): the...

For patriotic citizens, living in their native country is intrinsically preferable compared to living in the diaspora. In this paper, we analyze the implications of such a patriotic lock-in in a world with international migration and redistributive taxation. In a formal model of redistribution...

The paper asks why retirement can be so abrupt in countries such as France (½% of the workforce over 65), yet staged in Japan (8% over 65). We find part of the answer in tax laws that prevent people working and receiving a pension, and make little allowance for fair pension increases if...

This paper discusses the link between Ramp;D and productivity across the European industrial and service sectors. The empirical analysis is based on both the European sectoral OECD data and on a unique micro longitudinal database consisting of 532 top European Ramp;D investors. The main...

In the US and many other OECD countries, expenditures for defense-related R&D represent a key policy channel through which governments shape innovation, and dwarf all other public subsidies for innovation. We examine the impact of government funding for R&D – and defense-related R&D in...

We propose a simple theory of under- and over-employment. Individuals of high type can perform both skilled and unskilled jobs, but only a fraction of low-type workers can perform skilled jobs. People have different non-pecuniary values over these jobs, akin to a Roy model. We calibrate two...

Short-time work is a labor market policy that subsidizes working time reductions among firms in financial difficulty to prevent layoffs. Many OECD countries have used this policy in the Great Recession. This paper shows that the effects of short-time work are strongly time dependent and...