Existing tax schedules are often overly complex and characterized by discontinuities in the marginal tax burden. In this paper we propose a class of progressive smooth functions to replace personal income tax schedules. These functions depend only on three meaningful parameters, and avoid the...

We explore the relationship between collaborations in writing papers and the academic productivity of economists and, particularly, we describe the magnitude and intensity of co-authorship among economists. To that end, we employ interaction maps from Complex Systems methods to study the global...

This paper questions unconventional fiscal policy effects when the monetary policy rate is at the zero lower bound. We provide evidence for the US that the spread between the policy rate and the US-LIBOR, which is more relevant for private sector transactions, increases with government...

This review paper articulates the relationship between prediction market data and event studies, with a special focus on applications in political economy. Event studies have been used to address a variety of political economy questions ﾖ from the economic effects of party control of...

Search Models of the labor market are widespread and influential but they usually ignore that labor market decisions are frequently taken at the household level. We fill this gap by developing and estimating an household search model with on-the-job search and labor supply. We build on previous...

Shifting taxes from labor income to consumption is regularly suggested as a measure to induce work incentives. We investigate the effect of increases in the Value Added Tax on labor supply and the income distribution in Germany, which is compensated by a revenue-neutral reduction in...

When considering multiple hypothesis tests simultaneously, standard statistical techniques will lead to over-rejection of null hypotheses unless the multiplicity of the testing framework is explicitly considered. In this paper we discuss the Romano-Wolf multiple hypothesis correction, and...

This paper develops and applies a Bayesian approach to Exploratory Factor Analysis that improves on ad hoc classical approaches. Our framework relies on dedicated factor models and simultaneously determines the number of factors, the allocation of each measurement to a unique factor, and the...

Do higher proportions of (a) informed investors and (b) high-quality projects increase the number of good projects that are ultimately financed via crowdfunding? A simple model and simulation reveals the answers to both questions to be: 'not necessarily'

Job insecurity exerts negative effects on self-reported health. Using the Spanish Survey of Household Finances for 2011-2014, this paper asks whether and to what extent debt burdens enhance these detrimental health effects. To address potential endogeneity problems surrounding this question, the...