We present a non-cooperative model of a family’s time allocation between work and a home-produced public good, and examine whether the income tax should apply to couples or individuals. While tax-induced labor supply distortions lead to overprovision of the public good, spouses’ failure to...

In this paper the direction of the long-run migration incentive in the presence of closed borders and the long-run welfare effects of a regime change from ’autarky’ to ’free permanent migration’ are studied. A difference in birth-country specific fertility rates is treated as the final...

We consider a sequential game in which one player produces a public good and the other player can influence this decision by making an unconditional transfer. An efficient allocation requires the Lindahl property: the sum of the two (implicit) individual prices has to be equal to the resource...

In German-style private health insurance contracts, aging provisions are used to flatten premium profiles. An individual would like to change insurer if she perceives a low service quality. The first-best optimum is characterized by provision transfers upon insurer changes which are higher for...

This paper explores the implications of gender-based income taxation in a non-cooperative model of a couple’s time allocation between market work and providing a household public good. We find that the optimal structure of differential taxation by gender is solely determined by spouses’...

We consider lifetime health insurance contracts in which ageing provisions are used to smooth the premium profile. The capital stock accumulated for each individual can be decomposed into two parts: a premium insurance and an annuitized life insurance, only the latter being transferable between...

Over the next four decades, increasing old-age dependency ratios will exert an enormous upward pressure on welfare spending in most developed countries. As this is mainly due to existing unfunded public pension schemes, many countries have embarked on far-reaching reforms in this area,...

This paper discusses the welfare implications of a pay-as-you-go pension reform by introducing a child benefit in an endogenous fertility setting. In the model of a small open economy, higher fertility is associated with a reduction of lifetime labour supply. The optimum share of...

The impacts of introducing work requirements for welfare recipients are studied in an efficiency wage model. If the workfare package is not mandatory, it will reduce employment, profits, and utility levels of employed and unemployed workers. In contrast, mandatory effort requirements will...