This paper proposes the creation of regional currencies, which we call social currencies; (pesetas, dracmas, liras, and deutsche marks); with the finality of financing minimum income programs and micro-finance programs in Europe. The backing for this currency will be Euros collected, based on...

We study the sustainability of pension systems using a life-cycle model with distortionary taxation that sets an upper limit to the real value of tax revenues. This limit implies an endogenous threshold dependency ratio, i.e. a point in the cross-section distribution of the population beyond...

The present paper attempts to demonstrate that finding an appropriate trade-off between direct and indirect taxes can help smooth policy makers’ way through reconciling the contradictory notions of equity and efficiency. Our theoretical and empirical analysis is based on the assumption that...