This paper examines the role of employer provided health insurance in the retirement decisions of dual working couples. The near elderly have high-expected medical expenditures; therefore, availability of health insurance is an important factor in their retirement decisions. We determine if...

This paper investigates the impact of own-health,and that of others, on individual labour supply. We estimate a model of hours of caring and hours of work using a large micro dataset of UK households. We find that own ill health has a negative effect on wages for men but not women; being a carer...

This paper models corruption as optimal parasitism in organizations where teams of agents are weakly restrained by principals. Each agent takes on part of the role of principal, choosing how much to invest in policing to repress corruption in others and how rapaciously to act when unpoliced...

This paper presents a general result for simultaneous reform of tariffs and quotas in a small open economy, where some of the quota rents do not accrue to domestic residents. Absent highly perverse income effects, welfare must rise following a uniform proportionate reduction in tariffs and a...

This paper addresses the puzzle that public services in some developing countries, especially in Africa, are poor despite large public expenditure. The intertemporal model here studies a government’s optimal choice between redistribution and public investment. Ethnic diversity and political...

This paper examines the issues involved in setting the appropriate tax on cigarettes in Ireland. It compares Irish tax rates with those in other EU countries and then examines the external costs of cigarette consumption in Ireland. The paper concludes by reviewing some recent evidence that...

Relatively little attention has been paid to the issue of how individual regions will fare as a consequence of the national decision on whether or not to adopt the single European currency. Regional welfare is influenced by both mean income and volatility. The present paper focuses on...