Monetary policy decisions taken by central banks affect the economy, society and politics worldwide. Does the presence of women matter in these decisions? We construct a new and unique dataset on the presence of women on central bank monetary policy committees for a large sample of countries,...

Why are Bismarckian social security systems associated with larger public pension expenditures, a smaller fraction of private pension and lower income in-equality than Beveridgean systems? These facts are puzzling for political economy theories of social security which predict that Beveridgean...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on families' lives, with parents all over the world struggling to meet the increased demands of housework, childcare and home-schooling. Much of the additional burden has been shouldered by women, particularly in countries with a traditionally...

We provide a long term perspective on the individual retirement behavior and on the future of early retirement. In a cross-country sample, we find that total pension spending depends positively on the degree of early retirement and on the share of elderly in the population, which increase the...

Countries with low intragenerational redistribution in social security systems (Bismarckian) are associated with larger public pension expenditures, a smaller fraction of private pension and lower income inequality than countries with more redistributive social security (Beveridgean). This paper...

Gender stereotypes are well established also among women. Yet, a recent literature suggests that learning from other women experience about the effects of maternal employment on children outcomes may increase female labor force participation. To further explore this channel, we design a...

What is the impact of demographic changes on lobbying activities, when two opposite groups compete for obtaining a transfer from each other? This paper compares two lobbying models: good-intensive and time-intensive. Depending on the specification of the political technology of the pressure...

One of the stylized facts of unfunded social security programs is that programs are larger in size, measured relative to the GDP, the tighter the link between pension claims and past earnings. We provide a political economy explanation of this stylized fact in a median voter model, where people...

We present an empirical model of wealth transfer taxation in the revenue systems of the G7 countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U. K. and the U. S. -...

We study how family culture affected the initial welfare state design. Our theoretical framework shows that pre-existing institutions — namely inheritance rules — shaped the within family intergenerational transmission of resources. This organization is embedded in the family culture that...