One of the main results of the literature on the effects of uncertainty on trade states that uncertainty should not matter in the presence of well developed forward markets. Empirical studies, however, do not support this result. We derive the demand for forward cover in a small open economy...

This paper examines the role of bequests and of taxation on bequests for the distribution of wealth. We investigate a model with overlapping generations and heterogenous households where parents derive utility directly from their bequests. Using the coefficient of variation as measure of...

Getting a tenured position in economics in Germany is viewed as a random outcome where the probability of tenure depends on the quantity and quality of publications, age and years since PhD. We measure publications both in units of Top 5 journals and in units of the European Economic Review...

We analyse a world consisting of 'the North' and 'the South' where labour standards in the North are set by trade unions. Standards set by unions tend to increase output and welfare. There are no unions in the South and work standards are suboptimal. Trade between these two countries can imply a...

Historically, worker movements have played a crucial role in making workplaces safer. Firms traditionally oppose better health standards. According to our interpretation, workplace safety is costly for firms but increases the average health of workers and thereby the aggregate labour supply. A...

We investigate how continental European unemployment can be reduced without reducing unemployment benefits and without reducing the net income of low-wage earners. Lower unemployment replacement rates reduce unemployment, the net wage and unemployment benefits. A lower tax on labour increases...

Rare and randomly occurring events are important features of the economic world. In continuous time they can easily be modeled by Poisson processes. Analyzing optimal behavior in such a setup requires the appropriate version of the change of variables formula and the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman...

Cyclical components are analytically computed in a theoretical model of stochastic endogenous fluctuations and growth. Volatility is shown to depend on the speed of convergence of the cyclical component, the expected length of a cycle and on the altitude of the slump. Taxes affect these channels...