This paper tests two competing hypotheses about the influence of financial institutions as large shareholders on the performance of their industrial portfolio firms: the superior monitoring hypothesis versus the rent extraction hypothesis. The methodology of this study exploits the abolishment...

We study the sustainability of public debt in a closed production economy where a benevolent government chooses scal policies, including haircuts on its outstanding debt, in a discretionary manner. Government bonds are held by domestic agents to smooth consumption over time and because they...

Using unique evidence from the OeNB Euro Survey, this paper sheds light on the correlation between the distribution of income and trust in national governments in ten Central, Eastern and Southeastern European (CESEE) countries between 2009 and 2015. By applying multilevel modeling to account...

In this paper, we evaluate the effects of free pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs on the labor force participation (LFP) of mothers. We use variation in pre-K rules across all US states, including income eligibility requirements in some states. To estimate the causal effects of access to pre-K on...

Can taxes on consumption redistribute in developing countries? Contrary to consensus, we show that taxing consumption is progressive once we account for informal consumption. Using household expenditure surveys in 32 countries we proxy for informal consumption using the type of store where...

Carbon control policies in OECD countries commonly differentiate emission prices in favor of energy-intensiveindustries. While leakage provides a efficiency argument for differential emission pricing, the lattermay be a disguised beggar-thy-neighbor policy to exploit terms of trade. Using an...

We study Pareto optimal tax and education policies when human capital upon labor market entry is endogenous and individuals face wage uncertainty. Though optimal labor distortions are history-dependent, i.e. depend on income and education, simple policy instruments can yield the desired...

When deciding on the social desirability of public investment, the cost of a project is sometimes adjusted by a factor known as the Marginal Cost of Public Funds (MCP F ), which captures the cost of raising public funds through distortionary taxation. However, there is no scholarly consensus on...

This paper studies optimal taxation of income and education when employers cannot observe workers' productivity and workers signal their productivity to firms by choosing both quantity and quality of education. We characterize constrained efficient allocations and derive conditions under which...

For more than 25 years, the Social Security Trust Fund has been projected to run out of money in 2033 (give or take a few years), potentially causing benefits to be severely reduced in the absence of corrective legislative action. Today (February 2024), projections are made by the Social...