One of the central predictions of the Life Cycle Hypothesis is that individuals run down their wealth during retirement. Although housing wealth is the largest component of total household wealth in most countries, empirical evidence supporting the decumulation hypothesis is mixed. In this paper...

Drawing from the formal setting of the optimal tax theory, the paper identifies the level of Rawlsianism (or aversion to poverty) of the European social planners starting from the observation of real data and redistribution systems and builds a metric that allows measuring the degree of...

We present a model which allows us to show that strati?cation of public universities according to the quality they o¤er and the quality of students they select is a plausible result even in a public university system where tuition fees are uniform and decided by the administration. This result...

This paper studies the effect of the inception of the euro on the international tourism of the Eurozone. To do this, a gravity model is estimated using two different samples, the OECD countries and the European OECD countries, over the period 1995-2008. The results suggest a noticeable impact of...

We present evidence of the impact of input and output trade liberalization on establishment-level job flows. Using a longitudinal database containing the universe of manufacturing establishments in California from 1992 to 2004, we find that a decline in input or output trade costs causes job...

We analyze the asymptotic distributions associated with the seasonal unit root tests of the Hylleberg et al. (1990) procedure for quarterly data when the innovations follow a moving average process. Although both the t- and F-type tests suffer from scale and shift effects compared with the...

The present article aims at contributing to the literature on children welfare evaluation by taking into account intra-household distribution of resources and, as a consequence, intra-household inequality. This task cannot be accomplished within the standard framework of unitary models of...

This paper studies the welfare implications of different institutions certifying environmental quality supplied by a monopoly. The monopolist can voluntarily certify the quality of the product through an eco-label provided either by an NGO or a for-proft private certifier (PC). The NGO and the...

In a Downsian model of political competition we compare the equilibrium tax and redistribution level obtained from two systems to finance parties' political campaigns: the public and the private system. In the private system ideological voters make campaign contributions to increase the chances...

We analyse risk-taking behaviour of banks in the context of spatial competition. Banks mobilise unsecured deposits by offering deposit rates, which they invest either in a prudent or in a gambling asset. Limited liability along with high return of a successful gamble induce moral hazard at the...