Marginal income taxes may have an insurance effect by decreasing the effective fluctuations of after-tax individual income. By compressing the idiosyncratic component o personal income fluctuations, higher marginal taxes should be negatively correlated with the dispersion of consumption across...

If households face uninsurable idiosyncratic earnings risk, theory predicts that redistributive tax and transfer systems have both an insurance and a distortionary effect. Exploiting the substantial variation of tax and transfer systems across U.S. states and over time, we investigate the...

Increasing marginal tax rates and making payments to the poor reduce inequality and introduce savings dis-incentives. Using a heterogeneous agent model with incomplete markets, we show that higher taxes (and transfers) decrease consumption inequality but also mean savings and mean consumption....

Marginal income taxes may have an insurance effect by decreasing the effective fluctuations of after-tax individual income. By compressing the idiosyncratic component of personal income fluctuations, higher marginal taxes should be negatively correlated with the dispersion of consumption across...

How does the punishment for default affect repayment behavior? We use administrative data, provided by the leading Italian lender of unsecured credit to the household sector, to analyze households repayment behavior. Administrative data are particularly well suited to study what factors are...

Understanding the factors that influence arrears is crucial if policy makers wish to alleviate the problems caused by debt. But conventional estimates of repayment behaviour impose implausible assumptions about lender behaviour. However, an upper and lower bound for the effect of the...

Understanding the factors that influence arrears is crucial if policy makers wish to alleviate the problems caused by debt. But conventional estimates of repayment behaviour impose implausible assumptions about lender behaviour. However, an upper and lower bound for the effect of the...

We consider a model where exporting requires finding a local partner in each market. Contracts are incomplete and exporters must learn the reliability of their partners through experience. In the model, export behavior is state-dependent due to matching frictions, although there are no sunk...

This paper investigates the eectiveness of immigration control policies when the duration of stay of illegal immigrants is endogenous because they may return home voluntarily. It shows that return intentions matter. First, we nd that spending on border enforcement can potentially increase the...