The Canadian government has a policy of searching laptop computers at airports and other border crossings. It is considered an outrageous policy by those who have been subjected to this gross invasion of privacy, and it has drawn some press attention. The Canadian courts have yet to rule on the...

Federal health and safety regulations have saved or improved the lives of thousands of Americans, but protecting our citizens from risk entails significant costs. In a world of limited resources, we must spend our regulatory dollars responsibly in order to do the most we can with the money we...

Application of the social discount rate to public sector projects is one of the most crucial parameters in cost benefit analysis. Because of its importance some countries have a formal discount rate and method of discounting policies. The United Kingdom was one of the earliest to adopt a policy...

For two independent principles of intergenerational equity, the implied discount rate equals the growth rate of real per capita income, say, 2%, thus falling right into the range suggested by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. To prove this, we develop a simple tool to evaluate small...

For two independent principles of intergenerational equity, the implied discount rate equals the growth rate of real per-capital income, say 2%, thus falling right into the range suggested by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. To prove this, we develop a simple tool to evaluate small...

For two independent principles of intergenerational equity, the implied discount rate equals the growth rate of real per-capita income, say 2%, thus falling right into the range suggested by the U.S. Offce of Management and Budget. To prove this, we develop a simple tool to evaluate small policy...

We identify the degree of intergenerational altruism in an OLG framework à la Barro exploiting the quasi-experimental variation generated by reforms of bequest taxation (estate or inheritance tax, in the U.S.) and taxes on inter vivos real estate donations (gift tax, in the U.S.) that were...

This paper investigates the effects of estate taxation when firms cannot directly observe worker skill levels. Imperfect labor market signaling gives rise to an information externality that causes workers to free-ride off of others' human capital acquisition. Inherited wealth exacerbates the...

This paper shows that altruistic parents with utilitarian preferences may fare better if they transfer resources to their children early in life instead of delaying the bulk of transfers until after their death. Moreover, the outcome of the analysed "family transfer game" is not Pareto-efficient...

This paper studies the implications of changes in the fiscal (spending-tax) policy mix when all categories of spending and taxes are according to their functional breakdown. In so doing, we build a general equilibrium OLG model which naturally incorporates the main functional categories of...