French retirees benefit from specific taxation decreases. These tax exemptions imply considerable public tax expenditures that may be unjustifiable in terms of equity. In this article, we examine the adequacy of tax arrangements for French retirees in the current context of public pension...

This paper studies the impact of the progressivity of income and inheritance tax on wealth inequality in France. By switching to a proportional tax system for each type of tax, we find that income-tax progressivity is more effective than inheritance-tax progressivity in reducing wealth...

The 2007-2009 crisis has led to a return of Keynesian analyses and policies. The paper analyses the contradictions between a structural crisis, the implementation at a very large scale of Keynesian policies and the denial to undermine financial capitalism. The crisis has led the French...

Based on multivariate Markov-switching models, this paper presents new results on the interactions between global imbalances, credit spreads, housing markets, macroeconomic variables, commodities and equities during Q1-1987/Q1-2011. We show that rising global imbalances and the uncontrolled...

This paper considers the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on the optimal level of public debt. Households are subject to both aggregate and idiosyncratic risk and insurance market imperfectness prevents them from from fully insuring against risk. We find that the optimal level of public debt...

Who are the most prone to pay bribes? Who are angled for bribes? Who pay? This article explores these issues in sub-Saharan Africa, an area of the world where corruption is widespread. This paper empirical basis is a rich collection of comparable data provided by the Afrobarometer surveys...