This paper aims to shed light on the role of the 'ideology' of political parties in shaping the evolution of the welfare state in 18 developed democracies, by providing empirical findings on the determinants of social programs entitlements and social spending over the period 1981-1999. The paper...

This paper is a contribution to the debate on policy complementarity in relation to deregulation in the product and labour markets. We develop a model of dynamic efficiency wages and monopolistic competition. Whereas most of the literature points toward the gains associated to an increase in...

This paper presents a model allowing to analyze voting, welfare institutions and economic performance. We consider a political economy framework with three classes of agents: entrepreneurs, employed workers and unemployed workers. Agents vote on alternative institutional options: the degree of...

Standard economic wisdom generally stresses the benefits of increased competition on the product market. This paper proposes a model of monopolistic competition with an endogenous determination of workers flows in and out of unemployment, where wages are determined according to an efficiency...

This paper provides new evidence on the linkages between a large array of institutional arrangements (on product, labour and financial markets) and employment performance. Our analysis includes unemployment, inactivity and jobless rates, thus allowing us to control for possible substitution...

This paper proposes a model of efficiency wage with endogenous workers flows in interaction with imperfect competition on the product markets. Subject to economy-wide shocks, firms hire and fire workers thus generating a certain turnover. We show that the intensity of this turnover negatively...

Civil war is often caused by poverty, and further demolishes existing capital. Such a vicious circle is detrimental for economic development of countries experiencing civil war. Civil war may also contribute to creative destructions of traditional economic, social and political system, leading...

Based on the Ramsey equation and an ethically motivated rejection of pure utility time discount, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change concentrates on the use of the elasticity of marginal utility ç in the intergenerational social welfare function. We support this position by...

In this paper, we reconsider the debate on Weitzman's (1998) suggestion to discount the long-run future at the lowest possible rate, referring to Gollier (2004) and Hepburn & Groom (2007). We show that, while Weitzman's use of the present value approach may indeed seem questionable, its outcome,...

The model describes a two person economy, in which one individual with positive exogenous income is altruist towards an individual with no income. The rich individual cares for her own social status. She evaluates her status by comparing disposable net cash incomes. When deciding on the size and...