Private wealth holdings are likely to become an increasingly important determinant in the jobexit decision of elderly workers. Net wealth may correlate with worker’s characteristics thatalso determine the exit out of a job. It is therefore important to include a rich set of...

Previous research on optimal R&D subsidies has focussed on the long run.This paper characterizes the optimal time path of R&D subsidization in a semi-endogenous growth model, by exploiting a recently developed numerical method.Starting from the steady state under current R&D subsidization in the...

Many policy makers and economists argue that financial literacy is key to financial well-being. But why do many individuals remain financially illiterate despite the apparent importance of being financially informed? This paper presents results of a field study linking individual decisions to...

This paper compares Bertrand and Cournot equilibria in a horizontallydifferentiated duopoly market with non-tournament R&D competition. We consider thatsuccess in R&D is uncertain. We show that whether firms invest more under Cournotcompetition or Bertrand competition is ambiguous and depends on...

Once a new technology has been invented, there is a credible threat of imitationwhen patents are long and imitation cost is low. When imitation is credible, the innovator hasan incentive to postpone technology adoption for relatively high cost of imitation. Thepossibility of licensing eliminates...

We introduce pollution, as a by-product of production, into a non-tournament model of R&Dwith spillovers. Technology policy takes the form of either R&D subsidisation or pre-competitiveR&D cooperation. We show that, when the emissions tax is exogenous, the optimal R&Dsubsidy can be negative,...

In pure population problems, a single resource is to be distributed equally among theagents in a society, and the social planner chooses population size(s) and per-capita consumption(s) for each resource constraint and set of feasible population sizes within thedomain of the solution...

The G20 summits in 2009 have proposed major changes in governance of the InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF). Most important seems to be the acknowledgment that the IMF in itscurrent form lacks legitimacy and ownership. Accordingly, the G20 suggests a reallocation ofvoting shares to emerging and...

Endogenous growth models, such as Barro (1990), predict that governmentexpenditure and taxation will have both temporary and permanent effects on growth.We test this prediction using panels of annual and period-averaged data for OECDcountries during 1970-95, isolating long-run from short-run...