Financing consumption of the elderly in the face of the projected increase in life expectancy is a key challenge for economic policy. Moreover, standard structural models with fully rational agents suggest that about 50-60 percent of old-age consumption is financed with voluntary savings, even...

Much of the focus of the UK pensions policy debate over the past decade has been on the adequacy (or otherwise) of private retirement saving. In this paper, we present the first assessment of the optimality of the retirement resources of English couple households born in the 1940s. Here,...

In 2002, the German government tried to increase private old-age provisions by introducing incentives such as supplementary subsidies and tax credits. Since then, the so-called “Riester pension” has grown in popularity. Apart from subsidized pension plans, unsubsidized private pension...

In developing societies, social norms typically ascribe differential weights to paternal, maternal and communal (or state) contributions to children's expenses. Individuals internalize these valuations. I examine a Cournot model of voluntary contribution to children's goods in a two-adult...

This paper aims to investigate the effects of the introduction of an active welfare state measure in France, the Revenu de Solidarité Active, which replaced the old system of social minima. By using a micro-macro simulation model, we characterize the effects on households’ disposable income,...

This paper explores the capability of the state to affect the individual?s decision to work for free. For this purpose we combine individual-level data from the European and World Values Survey with macroeconomic and political variables for OECD member countries. Empirically we identify three...

In developing societies, social norms typically ascribe differential weights to paternal, maternal and communal (or state) contributions to children's expenses. Individuals internalize these valuations. I examine a Cournot model of voluntary contribution to children's goods in a two-adult...

This paper examines the effects of the Working Families' Tax Credit (WFTC) on couples in Britain. We develop a simple model of household decisions which explicitly accounts for the role played by the tax and benefit system. Its main implications are then tested using panel data from the British...

The large size and rate of growth of the US Disability Insurance (DI) system makes it important to understand the factors that influence the decision to apply for DI, and one empirically relevant factor is the availability and generosity of Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits. UI's impact on DI...

The distributional impacts of fiscal policies are instrumental in reducing inequality in countries like the Philippines, where inequality has been persistently high. This paper assesses how equitable various taxes and transfers in the Philippines are by deriving the elasticities of Atkinson and...