Some existing welfare programs ("work-first") require participants to work in exchange for benefits. Others ("job search-first") emphasize private job-search and provide assistance in finding and retaining a durable employment. This paper studies the optimal design of welfare programs when (i)...

We study a general model of occupational choice and optimal income taxation where agents have private cost of work that differ across occupations and have both deterministic and random components. We apply our framework to study the work decisions of couples in an extensive set up and give...