We evaluate reforms to the U.S. tax system in a dynamic setup with heterogeneous married and single households, and with an operative extensive margin in labor supply. We restrict our model with observations on gender and skill premia, labor force participation of married females across skill...

When unemployment prevails, relations with a particular firm are valuable for workers. As a consequence, a worker may adhere to an implicit agreement to provide high effort, even when performance is not third-party enforceable. But can implicit agreements - or relational contracts - also...

In very different fields of economics, economic inference and policy evaluation require economists to parametrize a production function that links measures of input factors to measures of output. While doing so, strong assumptions are implicitly made about microeconomic variables governing the...

This paper studies in the presence of flexible outsourcing the effects of outsourcing costs, productivity of outsourcing, wage tax and tax exemption in an imperfectly competitive labour markets when labour unions and firms negotiate wages and the impacts of labour tax progression on domestic...

At the firm level, revenue and costs are well measured but prices and quantities are not. This paper shows that because of these data limitations estimates of returns to scale at the firm level are for the revenue function, not production function. Given this observation, the paper argues that,...

We study the impact of reputational incentives in markets characterized by moral hazard problems. Social preferences have been shown to enhance contract enforcement in these markets, while at the same time generating considerable wage and price rigidity. Reputation powerfully amplifies the...

We investigate the positive and normative consequences of child-labor restrictions for economic aggregates and welfare. We argue that even though the laissez-faire outcome may be inefficient, there are usually better policies to cure these inefficiencies than the imposition of a child-labor ban....

We investigate how nondemocratic regimes use the military and how this can lead to the emergence of military dictatorships. Nondemocratic regimes need the use of force in order to remain in power, but this creates a political moral hazard problem; a strong military may not simply work as an...

An industry is modeled in which entrepreneurs, who are heterogeneous in ability, may produce formally or informally. It is shown how the formal-informal mix depends on the distribution of ability, product demand and various parameter values. The industry equilibrium is compared to one in which...