The first pillars of social security systems differ widely across European countries both in the contribution rate and intra-generational redistribution. What would the impact of these differences be if EU citizens had free access to all systems? This paper aims to highlight some basic features...

In a second best environment, the optimal policy choice sometimes follows the first best rules. This note lays down the information structure and separability assumptions under which this property holds in a variety of setups. -- separability ; second best optimality ; indirect taxes ; Samuelson...

We assess the usefulness of stochastic redistribution among a continuum of risk-averse agents with quasilinear utilities in labor. Agents differ according to their consumption tastes, which remain private information. We identify circumstances where stochastic redistribution is socially...