This article models a two-period overlapping generations economy in the steady state where the realization of the quantity-quality number of children depends on an initial investment in children and on a random shock. It shows that the implementation of the first-best allocation, in which the...

The motivation for this symposium was the view that the problems of taxation of the family are very important, indeed central, for income tax policy, but are relatively neglected in theoretical public economics. We hope that this collection will stimulate interest and further work in this area....

This article surveys the theoretical literature on wealth transfer taxation. The focus is normative: we are looking at the design of an optimal tax structure from the standpoint of both equity and efficiency. The gist of this survey is that the optimal design crucially depends on the assumed...

Cette note a pour objectif d’illustrer, dans le cas de la Belgique et de ses régions, un problème particulier posé par la mesure de la pauvreté. Etant donné que la mortalité varie selon le niveau de revenu – les personnes aux revenus plus élevés vivant plus longtemps, en moyenne, que...

This paper studies the design of education policies in a setting of overlapping generations with heterogeneous individuals. Individuals differ in productivity (high and low earning ability) and in altruism (altruists and non altruists). Only altruistic parents invest in education out of some joy...

In this article, we use data on five social inclusion indicators (poverty, inequality, unemployment, education and health) to assess and compare the performance of 15 European welfare states (EU15) over a 12-year period from 1995 to 2006. Aggregate measures of performance are obtained using...

This paper reviews the arguments which can justify government intervention in health care and health insurance. It is shown that moral hazard or adverse selection do not appear to justify public intervention. The two main arguments in favor of public health insurance appear to be its lower...

It is often argued that implicit taxation on continued activity of elderly workers is responsible for the widely observed trend towards early retirement. In a world of laissez-faire or of first-best efficiency, there would be no such implicit taxation. This raises the question of whether a bias...