作者：Acemoglu, D; Johnson, S
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：This paper evaluates the importance of property rights institutions, which protect citizens against expropriation by the government and powerful elites, and contracting institutions, which enable private contracts between citizens. We exploit exogenous variation in both types of institutions driven by colonial history and document strong first-stage relationships between property rights institutions and the determinants of European colonization strategy ( settler mortality and population dens...
作者：Nishiyama, S; Smetters, K
作者单位：University System of Georgia; Georgia State University; University of Pennsylvania; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Fundamental tax reform is examined in an overlapping-generations model in which heterogeneous agents face idiosyncratic wage shocks and longevity uncertainty. A progressive income tax is replaced with a flat consumption tax. If idiosyncratic wage shocks are insurable ( i. e., no risk), this reform improves ( interim) efficiency, a result consistent with the previous literature. But if, more realistically, wage shocks are uninsurable, this reform reduces efficiency, even though national wealth ...
