Governments are known for procrastinating when it comes to resolving painful policy problems. Whatever the political motives for waiting to decide, procrastination distorts economic decisions relative to what would arise with early policy resolution. In so doing, it engenders excess burden. This...

This paper addresses two related issues: the optimal intergenerational sharing of labor productivity risks, through a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) social security with contingent rates of benefits and contributions, and the optimal combination of PAYG and funded savings in a small open economy. It shows...

Advances in information technology have improved the administrative feasibility of redistribution based on lifetime earnings recorded at the time of retirement. We study optimal lifetime income taxation and social insurance in an economy in which redistributive taxation and social insurance...

The paper examines the possible effects of introducing a large-scale welfare reform in Sweden, namely, the introduction of comprehensive welfare accounts. Under this policy, individuals make mandatory contributions to accounts, which they can top up with voluntary contributions. In return,...

In this paper I consider the normative arguments that justify a public social security system as a redistributive device when goverment is concerned with individual utility and poverty. Redistribution can be done using social security, income taxation or both. The main objective of this paper is...

Advances in information technology have improved the administrative feasibility ofredistribution based on lifetime earnings recorded at the time of retirement. We study optimal lifetime income taxation and social insurance in an economy in which redistributive taxation and social insurance serve...

Although the optimal policy under endogenous fertility has been widely studied, the optimal public intervention under endogenous childbearing age has remained largely unexplored. This paper examines the optimal family policy in a context where the number and the timing of births are chosen by...

France has a track record of persistent general government deficits, partly reflecting pro-cyclical fiscal policies in upswings. This has resulted in a quadrupling of its public debt-to-GDP ratio since the 1970s to above 80% of GDP. Reducing public debt is crucial because a high level of public...

A social market economy, together with corrective government activities, allows citizens to achieve the highest possible welfare with limited resources. Income and welfare, however, tend to be very unequally distributed in society. Most theories of justice call for some redistribution for a more...

The paper is based on an individual life-cycle model, which describes the purely economic components of human capital. The present value of human capital is determined by all future income flows, which at the same time constitute the individual as well as the total tax base of a nation....