Income-based targeting (or means-testing) reduces social security benefits as income rises. This form of targeting entails a well-known incentive distortion; the prospect for the recipients of losing part of their benefits if they were to earn more can deter them to work harder. In this paper,...

We investigate channels of federally provided income insurance for U.S. States, finding that a major part of federal insurance is provided through transfers. We compare the "bang for the buck" of various fiscal institutions, finding that unemployment benefits are dramatically more efficient in...

A partly heuristic attempt at exploring long-run policies aimed at a second-best compromis between ex ante risk-sharing efficiency and ex post productive efficiency. Wage subsidies for low-skilled workers financed vy taxes on high wages are advocated, together with imposed risk sharing between...

The European population is living longer but retiring earlier. More and more individuals are spending an increasing fraction of their lifetime relying on retirement benefits. At the same time, social security programs face mounting financial difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to explain...

This paper presents a political economy approach to payroll tax competition between countries adopting different systems of social insurance.

This paper is a step towards an explanation of the redistributive impact of ruling parties. It proposes a new theoretical interpretation regarding some changes in the social security systemt that could have affected inequality trends in Britain in the 1980s. I control the validity of this...

In order to stimulate labor market participation and improve the financial viability of the social security systems, many recent reform proposals in various OECD economies suggest to scale down the non-actuarial parts of the pension systems. These reforms have a flavour of increased efficiency...