This paper analyzes optimal linear taxes on capital and labor incomes in a life-cyclemodel of human capital investment, financial savings, and labor supply with heteroge-nous individuals. A dual income tax with a positive marginal tax rate on not onlylabor income but also capital income is...

We develop models of optimal linear and non-linear income taxation with endogenous human capital formation to explore optimal education subsidies. Optimal subsidies on education ensure efficiency in human capital accumulation and thus play an important role in alleviating the tax distortions on...

Antecol (2000) finds that culture plays a role in explaining inter-ethnic variation in the gender gap in labor force participation rates (LFPR). However, Antecol (2000) was unable to determine what the components of culture, such as differences in preferences regarding family structure and...

Across countries, women own significantly fewer businesses than do men. We show that this is due, in large part, to the fact that the propensity to start businesses of women is significantly lower than that of men. The lower propensity of women, in turn, appears to be highly correlated to...

We study entrepreneurs’ behavioral responses of effort (moral hazard) to avoid business failure.This is done in the context of an unemployment insurance scheme for self-employed, wherewe estimate how much of the transition probability to unemployment can be causally attributedto being insured....

In the Netherlands, the USA and Australia public funding has promoted parental choice by introducing a voucher for child care, where parents are free to choose the provider. The policy experiments in these three countries and the outcomes provide useful information about the consequences of...

This study exploits a new dataset in order to quantify the effect of financial incentives on retirement choices. This dataset contains for the first time in Italy information on seniority. In accordance with the general finding in Gruber and Wise (2004), we find that financial incentives have an...

Since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009, the unemployment rate has recovered slowly, falling by only one percentage point from its peak. We find that the lackluster labor market recovery can be traced in large part to weakness in aggregate demand; only a small part seems attributable to...

Commuting is, therefore, an important equilibrating vehicle in a city network constellation. Cities act as attractors of commuters, as most economic activity occurs in cities, thus providing a high share of attractive workplaces. Cities that are centrally connected in a network may act as both...

This paper considers a conditional cash transfer program targeting poor households in small rural villages and studies the effects of the geographic proximity between villages on individual enrollment decisions. Exploiting variations in the treatment status across contiguous villages generated...