The paper by Jagadeesh Gokhale and Laurence Kotlikoff tackles the issue of the redistributive features of the US tax and benefit system. The analysis is based on a microsimulation model which simulates in great detail taxes and transfer payments respectively paid and received by a representative...

We develop and estimate a life-cycle model in which individuals make decisions about consumption, human capital investment, and labor supply and use it to analyze changes in Social Security rules. The most important aspect of our paper is human capital towards the end of the life cycle which...

Americans work more than Europeans. Using micro data from the U.S. and 17 European countries, we study the contributions from demographic subgroups to these aggregate level differences. We document that women are typically the largest contributors to the discrepancy in work hours. We also...