This paper provides a theoretical and quantitative analysis of various types of wellknown employment subsidies. Two important questions are addressed: (i) How should employment subsidies be targeted? (ii) How large should the subsidies be? We consider measures involving targeting workers with...

This paper examines empirically how transparency of the budget process affects fiscal rules and incentives for fiscal gimmickry or creative accounting in the European Union. Using stock-flow adjustment data for EU countries from 1990-2007, we show that pressure from a deficit limit rule as in...

In this paper we investigate principal-agent problems with moral hazard and target budgets. The latter requires that the principal fixes a total budget for wages paid to agents regardless of their outputs realized ex post. Target budgets are relevant not just because they are exogenous...

This paper studies redistributional effects of competition between private and public insurance on health insurance markets based on the example of Germany. Health insurance is provided by a budget-balancing public insurance and a revenue-maximizing private insurance; customers are characterized...

Natural disasters are an important source of vulnerability in the Caribbean region. Despite being one of the more disaster-prone areas of the world, it has the lowest levels of insurance coverage. This paper examines the vulnerability of Belize's public finance to the occurrence of hurricanes...

Government-issued longevity bonds would allow longevity risk to be shared efficiently and fairly between generations. In exchange for paying a longevity risk premium, the current generation of retirees can look to future generations to hedge their aggregate longevity risk. There are also wider...