This paper studies the issue of political support for environmental taxes. The environmental tax is determined by majority voting, given a refund rule that specifies the allocation of tax proceeds. The refund rule is chosen by a welfare-maximizing constitutional planner. We show that: (i) The...

In overlapping generations models with endogenous fertility wherein the retired partake of consumption but do not contribute to production (through their labor), fertility has a positive and a negative externality. These can be internalized through a child allowance (or tax) or a linkage between...

We study the role of social long-term care (LTC) insurance when income taxation and private insurance markets are imperfect. Policy instruments include public provision of LTC as well as a subsidy on private insurance. The subsidy scheme may be linear or nonlinear. For the linear part we...

This paper studies the design of redistributive policiesbetween and within the member countries of an economic union.There are two types of countries, which differ in their proportionof high income individuals. Both the supra-national and the nationalgovernments attempt to redistribute income...

We assume that individual voters differ not only according to age but also productivity. In the steady state, workers with wages in the intermediate range join the retired persons to form a majority and vote for a positive level of social security. When a shock decreases population growth,...

Early retirement seems to plague social security systems in a number of European countries. In this paper we argue that delaying retirement may have two positive effects: it is likely to partially restore the financial balance of the system, and it may foster redistribution among retirees. To...