Pension benefit guarantee policies have been introduced in several countries to protect private pension plan members from the loss of income that would occur if a plan was underfunded when the sponsoring firm terminates a plan. Most of these public insurance schemes face financial difficulty and...

Low corporate taxes can help attract new firms. This is the main mechanism underpinning the standard race-to-the-bottom view of tax competition. A recent theoretical literature has qualified this view by formalizing the argument that agglomeration forces can reduce firms' sensitivity to tax...

We review the theoretical literature on defined benefit (DB) pension plans, particularly focusing on the issue of plan underfunding and benefit guarantee insurance schemes. The literature shows that underfunding can, under reasonable assumptions, be an equilibrium outcome even in the absence of...

It is widely recognized that “market failure” prevents e¢ cient risk sharing in natural disaster insurance. As a consequence, many countries adopted institutional frameworks involving public-private partnerships”. We de…ne risk selection as a situation where private companies pass...

We study the impact of tax competition on equilibrium taxes and welfare, focusing on the jurisdictional fragmentation of federations. In a representative-agent model of fiscal federalism, fragmentation among jurisdictions with benevolent tax-setting authorities unambiguously reduces welfare. If,...