In many developing and developed countries, government debt stabilization is an important policy issue. This paper models the strategic interaction between the monetary authorities who control monetization and the fiscal authorities who control primary fiscal deficits. Government debt dynamics...

The replacement of national currencies by a common currency in the EMU causes a monetary externality if the European Central Bank is inclined to monetize part of outstanding government debt in the community.High government debt in one part of the EU then increases the common inflation rate.We...

This paper develops a model of search on the labour market with training. The model reveals how the tax system can restore the social optimum if the Hosios condition is not satisfied in the private equilibrium. Furthermore, the effects are explored of a second-best reform from average to...

In countries like the US and the Netherlands health insurance is provided by private firms. These private firms can offer both individual and group contracts. The strategic and welfare implications of such group contracts are not well understood. Using a Dutch data set of about 700 group health...

This paper explores the use of auctions for privatizing public assets.In our model, a single "insider" bidder (e.g. incumbent management of a government-owned firm) possesses information about the asset's risky value.In addition, bidders are privately informed about their costs of exploiting the...

We present a theoretical and empirical analysis of different types of active labor market policies (ALMP).In our empirical analysis we use data on 20 OECD countries covering the time period 1985-1999.We find that labor market training is the most effective program to bring down...