Empirical models of trade agreements implicitly assume that withdrawal from a trade agreement has an equal and opposite trade effect as accession, i.e., symmetry. With increasing opposition to international economic cooperation, it becomes urgent to test this assumption. We analyze a...

We leverage decades of administrative data and quasi-experimental variation in the introduction of universal long-term care (LTC) insurance in Germany in 1995 to examine whether health insurance expansions can stimulate local economies. We find that the LTC insurance rollout led not only to...

We study the interaction between unemployment insurance (UI) and other social transfers exploiting state-level changes to UI generosity and data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (1990-2013). We find that more generous UI leads to a reduction in the receipt of other public...

This paper presents a dynamic general equilibrium model designed to examine the macroeconomic effects and welfare implications of alternative reforms to the US health insurance system. Specifically, it scrutinizes the extent to which health care reform can mitigate inefficiencies stemming from...

We consider welfare impacts of prohibitive tariffs on trading partners. Initially, there is prohibitive tariff by one country and a zero tariff by its trading partner. Thereafter, the trading partner also resorts to prohibitive tariff. We demonstrate how prohibitive tariffs by the trading...

The current report presents findings of a research project that explored attitudes towards welfare and redistributive policies among Irish residents. Public support for the welfare state is an important foundation for democratic governments to pursue the policies needed to alleviate poverty in...

This paper studies self-preferencing in search results and how it affects quality competition in the U.S. Apple App Store. Leveraging a search algorithm change, I find that rankings significantly affect app demand and developers’ quality provision. To examine the welfare effects of...

The COVID-19 pandemic increased public debt and changed the income distribution in many countries. We use a numerical simulation approach to derive optimal nonlinear marginal tax rates for the pre-crisis and crisis periods. We contribute to the literature by examining optimal tax rates...

We leverage decades of administrative data and quasi-experimental variation in the introduction of universal long-term care (LTC) insurance in Germany in 1995 to examine whether health insurance expansions can stimulate local economies. We find that the LTC insurance rollout led not only to...

Empirical models of trade agreements implicitly assume that withdrawal from a trade agreement has an equal and opposite trade effect as accession, i.e., symmetry. With increasing opposition to international economic cooperation, it becomes urgent to test this assumption. We analyze a...

We construct a macroeconomic model based on household wealth preferences to identify the theoretical conditions under which full-employment and/or stagnation steady states hold. The theoretical conditions also specify the minimum level of inflation target that shifts the economy from stagnation...

Modern analysis of the welfare effects of monetary policy is based on moneyless models and therefore ignores the effect of inflation on the efficiency of transactions. A justification for this strategy is that these welfare effects are quantitatively very small, as argued by Ireland (2009). We...

This paper analyzes the welfare impacts of import bans in Nigeria, and how these are shaped by evasion. Bans were not effectively enforced, and contributed to informal trade. The imposition of bans nonetheless increased consumer prices by 5.8% on average. However, price increases are...

In "Immigration, search and redistribution: A quantitative assessment of native welfare," a paper by Battisti et al. published in the August 2018 issue of the Journal of the European Economic Association, the authors inquire about how migration to 20 Organization for Economic Cooperation and...

Aggregate price shocks can lead to significant inequality in losses both across and within income groups. This creates a trade-off between supporting households through subsidies, which target those most affected but introduce inefficiencies, and transfers, which are less distortionary but...

This paper examines the welfare effects of Tanzania's 2021 levy on mobile money transfers, a policy that sharply increased transaction costs in a country where mobile money is the primary channel for financial access and remittances. Using two waves of the Tanzania National Panel Survey (2014/15...

Parental transfers of time, education, and money shape intergenerational mobility. Using panel data from birth to retirement, we estimate child skill production functions and embed them in a dynastic model of parental investment. We find that parental time investments have a dual purpose:...

We quantify changes in concentration, market power and welfare in the UK grocery retail sector from 2002 to 2021. We document that an expansion of discounter-format retailers coincided with declining retail and manufacturer concentration across most narrowly defined product categories. We...