This paper is a first attempt to provide a quantitative evaluation of the welfare gains resulting from the introduction of flat income taxation in Bulgaria in 2008. Using a calibrated micro-founded endogenous growth model with physical and human capital accumulation to Bulgarian data, a...

This paper provides a quantitative evaluation of the welfare effect of the introduction of proportional taxation in Bulgaria in 2008, an effect that operates through the grey economy channel. Using a general-equilibrium model, augmented with informal sector, a computational experiment is...

Motivated by the highly-unionized public sectors, the high public shares in total employment, and the public-sector wage premia observed in Europe, this paper examines the importance of public-sector unions for macroeconomic theory. The model generates cyclical behavior in hours and wages that...

This paper aims to shed light on the importance of health considerations for business cycle fluctuations and the effect of health status on labor productivity and availability of labor input for productive use. To this end, Grossman's (2000) partial-equilibrium framework with endogenous health...

This paper focuses on explaining the economic fluctuations in Bulgaria after the introduction of the currency board arrangement in 1997, the period of macroeconomic stability that ensued, the EU accession, and the episode of the recent global financial crisis. This paper follows Chari et al....

This paper utilizes an otherwise standard micro-founded general-equilibrium setup, which is augmented with a revenue-extraction mechanism to assess the magnitude of VAT evasion. The model is calibrated to Bulgaria after the introduction of the currency board (1999-2014), as one of the very few...

This note explores the problem of aggregation with non-convex labor supply decisions in an economy with both straight time and overtime. In contrast to Hansen and Sargent (1988), the paper models this as a sequential decision. Instead of changing from one to infinity, with a sequential...

This paper explores the effects of fiscal policy in an economy based on indirect taxes, and in the presence of VAT evasion channel. In addition, the government is taxing all income at the same rate. The focus of the paper to compare and contrast two regimes - the exogenous (observed) vs. optimal...

This paper explores the problem of non-convex labor supply decisions in an economy with both private and public sector jobs. To this end, Hansen (1985) and Rogerson's (1988) indivisible-hours framework is extended to an environment featuring a double discrete labor choice. The novelty of the...

This paper describes the lottery- and insurance-market equilibrium in an economy with non-convex private- and public-sector employment. In contrast to Vasilev (2015a, 2015b), the public-sector labor supply decision is a sequential one. This requires two separate insurance market to operate, one...