More educated parents are observed to have better educated children. From a policy point of view, however, it is important to distinguish between causation and selection. Previous research trying to control for unobserved heterogeneity has found conflicting results: in most cases, a strong...

This paper investigates the relationship between saving and health spending in a two-period overlapping generations economy. Individuals work in the first period of life and live in retirement in old age. Health spending is an activity that increases the quality of life and longevity. Empirical...

We examine the second-best family policy under the assumption that both the number, and the future earning capacities of the children born to a couple are random variables with probability distributions conditional on unobservable parental actions. Potential parents take their decisions without...

We analyse a model of income tax avoidance with heterogenous agents; we assume the presence of a comparison income e¤ect and of a psychic cost (disutility) of tax dodging. In this context, we show two sets of results. First, we study the policy preferences of the agents, and identify a...

A large literature has studied the effects of PAYG systems on fertility, human capital and growth. We argue that the social security system may also interact with longevity when the latter is endogenously determined. We show that in such an environment, in a dynamically efficient economy PAYG...

Given that young children are under the control of their parents, if the government has a interest in either the welfare or the productivity of the former, it has no option but to act through the latter,. Parents are, in the ordynary sense....

The importance parents give to time spent with their children for their future behavioural and cognitive development deeply affected the patterns of time allocation of both working and non-working parents in all developed countries in the last decades. We compare the two existing waves of the...

In this paper, we formulate a dynamic utility maximization model of female labor force participation and fertility choices and estimate approximate decision rules using data on married women in Italy, Spain and France. The pattern of estimated state dependence effects across countries is...

This paper explores the possibilities of using fuzzy inference system and structural equation modelling to measure capabilities both at a theoretical and empirical level. Fuzzy set theory has been already used to measure functionings (Chiappero Martinetti 1996, 2000, Lelli 2001) while structural...

We formulate a model of household behavior in which cooperation is costly and in which these costs vary across households. Some households rationally decide to behave noncooperatively, which in our context is an e?cient outcome. An intriguing feature of the model is that, while the welfare of...