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 how the risk of divorce affects the human capital decisions of a young couple. We consider a setting where complete specialization (one of the spouses uses up all the education resources) is optimal with no divorce risk. Symmetry in education (both spouses receive an equal...

We study the role and design of private and public insurance programs when informal care is uncertain. Children's degree of altruism is randomly distributed over some interval. Social insurance helps parents who receive a low level of care, but it comes at the cost of crowding out informal care....

We study optimal income taxation in a framework where one's willingness to report his income truthfully is positively correlated with his type. We show that allowing low-productivity types to cheat leads to Pareto-superior outcomes as compared to deterring them, even if audits can be performed...

In a series of experiments conducted in Belgium (Wallonia and Flanders), France and the Netherlands, we compare behavior regarding tax evasion and welfare dodging, with and without information about others' behavior. Subjects have to decide between a 'registered' income, the realization of which...

This paper considers a three-overlapping-generations model of endogenous growth wherein human capital is the engine of growth. It first contrasts the laissez-faire and the optimal solutions. Three possible accumulation regimes are distinguished. Then it discusses a standard set of tax-transfer...

Our model explains the observed gender-specific patterns of career and child care choices through endogenous social norms. We study how these norms interact with the gender wage gap. We show that via the social norm a couple's child care and career choices impose an externality on other couples,...

Daughters are the principal caregivers of their dependent parents. In this paper, we study long-term care (LTC) choices by bargaining families with mixed- or same-gender siblings. LTC care can be provided either informally by children, or formally at home or in an institution. A social norm...

We study the design of public long-term care (LTC) insurance when the altruism of informal caregivers is uncertain. We consider non-linear policies where the LTC benefit depends on the level of informal care, which is assumed to be observable while children's altruism is not. The traditional...

We study the optimal long-term care policy when informal care can be provided by children in exchange for monetary transfers by their elderly parents. We consider a bargaining model with single-child families. Daughters have a lower labor market wage and a lower bargaining power within the...