In this paper we investigate experimentally the functioning of a wage tax financed unemployment benefit system on the development of the budget deficit, unemployment, and some other indicators of economic performance in an international economy. We find support for the hypothesis that...

Uncertainty about the future preferences of the government may induce policy makers to run excessive budget deficits. As a solution to this problem, economists have proposed to impose a binding debt rule. In this paper we argue that a binding debt rule does not eliminate the distortions due to...

When debt levels approach critical levels, tax payers may revolt against the associated debtservice burden. Funding problems may arise in capital markets when lenders anticipate such revolts and refuse to participate in debt auctions. We provide a stochastic framework to assess whether such...

This paper investigates the contribution of private and public channels for consumption risk sharing in the EMU over the period 1999-2015. In particular, we explore the role of financial integration versus international financial assistance for private consumption smoothing in this set of...

This paper investigates the contribution of private and public channels for consumption risk sharing in the EMU over the period 1999-2015. In particular, we explore the role of financial integration versus international financial assistance for private consumption smoothing in this set of...

Interest rates on public debt have for several years now fallen short of GDP growth rates in much of the Western world. In his presidential address to the AEA Blanchard argued that this implies that there are no fiscal costs to high debt (Blanchard, 2019). In this paper we argue that the safe...

Empirical labor economists have resorted to estimating the responsiveness of workers' wages on firms' ability to pay to assess the extent to which employers share rents with their employees. This paper compares this labor economics approach with two other approaches that rely on standard micro...

This paper analyzes selection and incentive effects of opting out from public to private insurance on employer Disability Insurance (DI) inflow rates. We use administrative information on DI benefit costs and opting-out decisions of a balanced panel of about 140,000 employers that are observed...

Mundlak (1978) proposed the addition of time averages to the usual panel equation in order to remove the fixed effects bias. We extend this Mundlak equation further by replacing the time-varying explanatory variables by the corresponding deviations from the averages over time, while keeping the...

It is well-known that individuals born in different periods of time (cohorts)exhibit different wealth accumulation paths. While previous studies have usedcohort dummies to proxy for this fact, research in this area suffers from aserious identification problem, i.e., how to disentangle age, time,...