We consider a two-period overlapping generations model in which individual voters differ by age and by productivity, In such a setting, a redistributive Pay-As-You-Go system is politically sustainable, even when the interest rate is larger than the rate of population growth. The workers with...

This paper provides a unified treatment of externalities associated with fertility and human capital accumulation as they relate to pension systems. It considers as overlapping generations model in which every generation consists of high earners and low earners with the proportion of types being...

We study exchanges between three overlapping generations with non-dynastic altruism. The middleaged choose informal care provided to their parents and education expenditures for their children. The young enjoy their education, while the old may leave a bequest to their children. Within each...

The purpose of this paper is to survey the theoretical literature on wealth transfer taxation. The focus is normative: we are looking at the design of an optimal tax structure from the standpoint of both equity and efficiency. The gist of this survey is that the optimal design closely depends on...

It is often argued that implicit taxation on continued activity of elderly workers is responsible for the widely observed trend towards early retirement. In a world of laissez-faire or of first-best efficiency, there would be no such implicit taxation. The point of this paper is that when...

A fat and a healthy good provide immediate gratification, and cause health costs or benefits in the long run, which are misperceived. Additionally, the fat good (healthy good) increases (decreases) health care costs by increasing (decreasing) the probability of suffering from a chronic disease...

There exists a wide variety of tax treatments of pensions across the world. And the reasons for such a range of regimes are not clear. This note reviews the general principles of pension taxes and analyses the theoretical foundations of why pension incomes ought to be taxed specifically. To do...

This paper studies the design of health insurance with ex post moral hazard, when there is imperfect competition in the market for the medical product. Various scenarios, such as monopoly pricing, price negotiation or horizontal differentiation are considered. The insurance contract specifies...

This paper studies the optimal non linear income tax of couples. We build a general unitary model of labor supply and allow multidimensional heterogeneity in a discrete type framework. We concentrate our analysis on the resulting intra-family labor allocation of labor supplies and show that this...

This paper shows that the combination of habit formation - present consumption creating additional consumption needs in the future - and myopia may explain why some retirees are forced to 'unretire', i.e., unexpectedly return to work. It also shows that when myopia about habit formation leads to...