This paper examines whether nonlinear and non-Gaussian features of earnings dynamics are caused by hours or hourly wages. Our findings from the Norwegian administrative and survey data are as follows: (i) Nonlinear mean reversion in earnings is driven by the dynamics of hours worked rather than...

In this paper we solve the dynamic optimal Ramsey taxation problem in a model with incomplete markets, where the government commits itself ex-ante to a time path of labor taxes, capital taxes and debt to maximize the discounted sum of agents' utility starting from today. Whereas the literature...

How much additional tax revenue can the government generate by increasing labor income taxes? In this paper we provide a quantitative answer to this question, and study the importance of the progressivity of the tax schedule for the ability of the government to generate tax revenues. We develop...

Americans work more than Europeans. Using micro data from the United States and 17 European countries, we document that women are typically the largest contributors to the cross-country differences in work hours. We also show that there is a negative relation between taxes and annual hours...

Using data from 15 European Union economies, we quantify the real effects of supply-side frictions due to the financial disintegration of European countries since the 2008 financial crisis. We develop a multi-country general equilibrium model with heterogeneous countries and destination-specific...

This paper studies the effects of income taxation on entrepreneurship, empirically and in a structural macro model with entrepreneurial choice. Combining state-level tax data with household and firm data we document that higher and more progressive taxation has a strong negative impact on...

This paper studies the impact of knowledge specialization on earnings losses following displacement. We develop a novel measure of the specialization of human capital, based on how concentrated the knowledge used in an occupation is. Combining our measure with individual labor histories from the...

For most academics and policy makers, the depth of the 2007-09 financial crisis, its longevity and its impacts on the real economy resulted from an erosion of confidence. This paper proposes to assess empirically the link between consumer sentiment and consumption expenditures for the United...