Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an important collective force in the Canadian economy, however the visibility and economic power of small businesses suffer due to their size and frequent turnover. When it comes to the issue of businesses being subject to occupational fraud, the...

The distributional effects of the minimum wage are analyzed in a model where skilled and unskilled labor are inputs into the production function. It is argued that distributional goals are best achieved by letting the labor market clear itself and achieving redistribution through taxes and...

This paper derives the optimal pension and tax parameters in a society where individuals differ in two characteristics: rationality and productivity. Rational agents, if not liquidity constrained, smooth consumption over their life-cycle. Myopic agents, by contrast, have ex ante a strong...

Spain’s government has introduced ambitious consolidation measures, which should yield a sizeable improvement in discretionary fiscal efforts. Should budgetary outcomes fall short of targets, the government should stand ready to introduce further measures, as announced. Such measures could...

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of the Italian social security system in an economy with uncertainty on wages, financial market returns and life expectancy. The introduction of a pension system reproducing the Italian statutory scheme turns out to decrease ex-ante individual welfare,...

In this paper we explore the consequences for optimality of a social planner adopting two different welfare criteria. The framework of analysis is an OLG model with physical and human capital. We first show that, when the SWF is a discounted sum of individual utilities defined over consumption...

In this paper, we consider how the retirement age as well as a tax financed pension system ought to respond to a change in the standard deviation of the length of life. In a first best framework, where a benevolent government exercises perfect control over the individuals’ labor supply and...

In this paper, we consider how the retirement age as well as a tax financed pension system ought to respond to a change in the standard deviation of the length of life. In a first best framework, where a benevolent government exercises perfect control over the individuals’ labor supply and...

In this paper, we consider how the retirement age as well as a tax financed pension system ought to respond to a change in the standard deviation of the length of life. In a first best framework, where a benevolent government exercises perfect control over the individuals’ labor supply and...

In OLG economies with life-cycle saving and exogenous growth, competitive equilibria in general fail to achieve optimality because individuals accumulate amounts of physical capital that differ from the one that maximizes welfare along a balanced growth path (the Golden Rule). With human...