Individuals, differing in productivity and life expectancy, vote over the size and type of a collective annuity. Its type is represented by the fraction of the contributive (Bismarckian) component (based on the workers past earnings) as opposed to the non- contributive (Beveridgean) part (based...

We build a model where two banks compete for the patronage of consumers by offering them, among other services and products, two forms of transactional media: paper statements and electronic substitutes. Both banks and both products are horizontally di¤erentiated and modeled à la...

We build a model where a postal incumbent offering single piece, transactional and advertising mail competes with postal entrants and with a firm offering an alternative medium. We solve for the optimal prices under various competition assumptions. We calibrate the model and provide numerical...

We study the political determination of the level of social long-term care insurance when voters also choose private insurance and saving amounts. Agents di§er in income, probability of becoming dependent and of receiving family help. Social insurance redistributes across income and risk...

We provide an explanation for why estate taxation is surprisingly little used over the world, given the skewness of the estate distribution. Taxing estates implies meddling with intra-family decisions, which may be frown upon by many. At the same time, the concentration of estates means that a...

This paper studies the design of couples’ income taxation when consumption and labor supply decisions within the couple are made by maximizing a weighted sum of the spouses’ utilities; bargaining weights are given but specific to each couple. Information structure and labor supply decisions...

This paper studies oligopolistic competition in education markets when schools can be private and public and when the quality of education depends on "peer group"effects. In the first stage of our game schools set their quality and in the second stage they fix their tuition fees. We examine how...

This paper studies how the risk of divorce a¤ects 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...