This chapter reviews the existing empirical evidence on how social insurance affects health. Social insurance encompasses programs primarily designed to insure against health risks, such as health insurance, sick leave insurance, accident insurance, long-term care insurance and disability...

Political connections between firms and autocratic regimes are not secret and often even publicly displayed in many developing economies. We argue that tying a firm's available rent to a regime’s survival acts as a credible commitment forcing entrepreneurs to support the government and to...

This paper analyzes inter- and intraregional redistribution in a centralized state using the citizen-candidate model. It focuses on conflicting interests among regions and among citizens of varying mobility. If discrimination with respect to place of residence and degree of mobility is possible,...

This paper discusses what determines the preferences of individuals for redistribution. We review the theoretical literature and provide a framework to incorporate various effects previously studied separately in the literature. We then examine empirical evidence for the US, using the General...

We fully display a cohort model of an economy with an aging population, taking into account varying family size, habit formation, inheritance and credit constraints. Filling the model with numbers, we are able to compare different pension reforms: 1. the base run, 2. the reduced accrual rates,...

In this paper I first provide an overview of alternative approaches to money, contrasting the orthodox approach, in which money is neutral, at least in the long run; and the Marx-Veblen-Keynes approach, or the monetary theory of production. I then focus in more detail on two main categories: the...

Voters often dismantle constitutional checks and balances on the executive. If such checks and balances limit presidential abuses of power and rents, why do voters support their removal? We argue that by reducing politician rents, checks and balances also make it cheaper to bribe or influence...

In this paper we present a model of flexicurity capitalism that exhibits a second labor market with the government as an employer of first resort, where all workers not employed by firms in the private sector find meaningful employment. We show that the model exhibits a unique interior steady...

This paper shows that under imperfect competition the welfare effects of indirect tax harmonization may depend crucially on whether taxes are levied by the destination or the origin principle. In a standard model of imperfect competition, while harmonization always makes at least one country...

In this paper we argue that authorities aid cooperation by means ofdirect coordination or the enforcement of re-commitment devices suchas contract laws.Credible threats of violence allow this role. In alocal interaction model, an authority forms if mutually connected individuals with sufficient...