This proposal involves the establishment of ‘welfare accounts’ for every person in a country. There are four accounts: a retirement account (covering pensions), an unemployment account (covering unemployment support), a human capital account (covering education and training), and a health...

The prevailing labour market models assume that minimum wages do not affect the labour supply schedule. We challenge this view in this paper by showing experimentally that minimum wages have significant and lasting effects on subjects’ reservation wages. The temporary introduction of a minimum...

In this paper, we provide evidence that reconciles the co-existence of high income mobility among people on low income and patterns of high persistence on income support among people whose income from government payments is low – both phenomena have been founded in different Australian...

We survey the recent literature on the effects of active labour market policies on individual labour market outcomes like employment and income, for adult female individuals without work in European countries. We consider skill-training programs, monitoring and sanctions, job search assistance,...

We explore the far-reaching implications of replacing current unemployment benefit (UB) systems by an unemployment accounts (UA) system. Under the UA system, employed people are required to make ongoing contributions to their UAs and the balances in these accounts are available to them during...

How are hourly wages affected by the Earned Income Tax Credit? Two strategies are utilized to determine the relationship between the credit and hourly wages. First, I use variation in state EITC supplements, which magnify the effect of the federal EITC. I find that a 10 percent increase in the...

What shapes the optimal degree of progressivity of the tax and transfer system? On the one hand, a progressive tax system can counteract inequality in initial conditions and substitute for imperfect private insurance against idiosyncratic earnings risk. At the same time, progressivity reduces...

This paper develops a statistical aggregation procedure for the Frisch elasticity of labor supply. It allows for worker heterogeneity and is applicable to an individual labor supply function with non-employment as a possible outcome. Subjecting all offered or paid wages to an unanticipated...