This paper studies optimal taxation schemes for education in a search-matching model where the labor market is divided between a high-skill and a low-skill sector. Two public policy targets - maximizing the global employment level and optimizing the social surplus - are studied according to...

Is the Great Depression amenable to real business cycle theory ? In the 1970s and 1980s Lucas and Prescott took an abstentionist stance. They admitted that, because of its exceptional character, an explanation of the Great Depression was beyond the grasp of the equilibrium approach to the...

This paper characterizes the optimal redistributive taxation when individuals are heterogeneous in two exogenous dimensions : Their skills and their values of non-market activities. Search-matching frictions on the labor markets create unemployment. Wages, labor demand and participation are...

We investigate how continental European unemployment can be reduced without reducing unemployment benefits and without reducing the net income of low-wage earners. Lower unemployment replacement rates reduce unemployment, the net wage and unemployment benefits. A lower tax on labour increases...