Atkinson and Stiglitz (Journal of Public Economics 1976) show that when the government has access to non-linear income taxation and consumer preferences are separable between consumption and leisure, there is no need for differentiated commodity taxation. This paper examines the empirical...

We develop a model of optimal carbon taxation and redistribution taking into account horizontal equity concerns by considering heterogeneous energy efficiencies. By deriving first- and secondbest rules for policy instruments including carbon taxes, transfers and energy subsidies, we then...

This paper considers the potential impact of welfare benefits on the partnership status of women in the UK. Using recent policy reforms to identify the response rate I find that a GBP100/week welfare benefit "partnership penalty" reduces the probability of a woman having a partner by seven...

Recent microeconometric studies of taxpayer' responsiveness to taxation have shown that intensive margin labor supply and earnings elasticities typically are modest and sometimes equal to zero. However, a common view is that long-run responses might still be large since micro-estimates are...

We present experimental evidence that enabling access to universal early child care for families with lower socioeconomic status (SES) increases maternal labor supply. Our intervention provides families with customized help for child care applications, resulting in a large increase in enrollment...

In this paper we consider an empirical collective household model of time allocation for two-earner households. The novelty of this paper is that we estimate a version of the collective household model, where the internally produced goods and the externally purchased goods are assumed to be...

With efforts across the industrial countries to increase the amount of foreign aid mounting, it is important to understand its determinants. This paper examines the factors affecting the support for foreign aid among voters in donor countries. A simple theoretical model, which considers an...

The deleterious impact of institutions of direct legislation on student performance found in studies for both the U.S. and Switzerland has raised the question of what its transmission channels are. For the U.S., an increase in the ratio of administrative to instructional spending and larger...

In Germany, there is no trade union membership wage premium, while the membership fee amounts to 1% of the gross wage. Therefore, prima facie, there are strong incentives to free-ride on the benefits of trade unionism. We establish empirical evidence for a private gain from trade union...

Many modern organisations collect data on individuals’ personality traits as part of their human resource selection processes. We test experimentally whether revealing information on personality data impacts on pro-social behaviour as measured in a one-shot modified dictator game and a public...