Drawing on the original survey of Japanese firms during the COVID-19 pandemic, we estimate the impact of the crisis on firms’ sales, employment and hours worked per employee and roles of Work-from-Home (WfH) arrangements in mitigating negative effects. We find that the lowered mobility,...

This paper proposes a simple mechanism of capital taxation that is negatively correlated with labor supply. Using a life-cycle model of heterogeneous agents, I show that this tax scheme provides a strong work incentive when households possess large assets and high productivity later in the life...

This paper quantifies the effects of two short-run fiscal policies, a temporary tax cut and a temporary rebate transfer, that are intended to stimulate economic activity. A reduction in income taxation provides immediate incentives to work and save more, raising aggregate output and consumption....

This paper presents four policy options to make Social Security sustainable under the coming demographic shift: 1) increase payroll taxes by 6 percentage points, 2) reduce the replacement rates of the benefit formula by one-third, 3) raise the normal retirement age from sixty-six to...