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作者：Cahuc, Pierre; Zylberberg, AndrE
作者单位：Institut Polytechnique de Paris; ENSAE Paris; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
摘要：This paper analyzes optimum income taxation in a model with endogenous job destruction that gives rise to unemployment. It is shown that optimal tax schemes comprise both payroll and layoff taxes when the state provides public unemployment insurance and aims at redistributing income. The optimal layoff tax is equal to the social cost of job destruction, which amounts to the sum of unemployment benefits (that the state pays to unemployed workers) and payroll taxes (that the state does not get w...
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作者：Schmidt, Stephen J.; McCarty, Therese A.
作者单位：Union College
摘要：We use a twenty-one year panel of data to examine the role of past income and aid, and expectations of future income, in regressions explaining state and local education spending. We show that simple estimates of the elasticity of spending with respect to financial resources are not robust to specification changes because the variables are non-stationary over time, causing inconsistent estimation of model parameters. Estimation in first differences (or equivalently, in growth rates) solves the...
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作者：Alonso-Carrera, Jaime; Caballe, Jordi; Raurich, Xavier
作者单位：Autonomous University of Barcelona; Autonomous University of Barcelona; Universidade de Vigo; Universidade de Vigo; University of Barcelona; University of Barcelona
摘要：We study how the introduction of consumption externalities affects the optimality of the dynamic equilibrium in an economy displaying dynastic altruism. When the bequest motive is inoperative consumption externalities affect the intertemporal margin between young and old consumption and thus modify the intertemporal path of aggregate consumption and capital. The optimal tax policy that solves this intertemporal suboptimality consists of a tax on capital income and a pay-as-you-go social securi...
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作者：LaLumia, Sara
作者单位：Williams College
摘要：The United States changed its tax treatment of married couples in 1948, from a system in which each spouse paid taxes on his or her own income to a system in which a married couple is taxed as a unit. The switch from separate to joint taxation changed incentives for labor supply and asset ownership. This paper investigates the effects of the conversion to joint taxation, taking advantage of a natural experiment created by cross-state variation in property laws. Married individuals in states wi...
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作者：Bernhardt, Dan; Krasa, Stefan; Polborn, Mattias
作者单位：University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
摘要：We develop a model in which profits of media firms depend on their audience ratings, and maximizing profits may involve catering to a partisan audience by suppressing information that the partisan audience does not like bearing. While voters are rational, understand the nature of the news suppression bias and update appropriately, important information is lost through bias and can lead to electoral mistakes. We characterize those conditions that give rise to electoral mistakes, showing that he...
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作者：Coate, Stephen; Conlin, Michael; Moro, Andrea
作者单位：Cornell University; Michigan State University; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - New York; Vanderbilt University
摘要：This paper explores the ability of pivotal-voter models to explain voter behavior in small-scale elections using data from Texas liquor referenda. The findings provide little support for the view that pivotal-voter models are a reasonable theory for understanding small-scale elections. Interestingly, this is not because they cannot explain the levels of turnout in the data, but rather because they cannot explain the size of the winning margins. The logic of pivotal-voter models implies that el...
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作者：Goodman, Joshua
作者单位：Columbia University
摘要：Most states now fund merit-based financial aid programs, the effects of which depend on how strongly students react to changes in college costs. I estimate such reactions using quasi-experimental aspects of a recent Massachusetts merit scholarship program intended to attract talented students to the state's public colleges. Despite its small monetary value, the Adams Scholarship induced 6% of winners to choose four-year public colleges instead of four-year private colleges, suggesting an elast...
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作者：Layard, Richard
摘要：The findings of behavioural economics and happiness research pose serious challenges for public policy analysis. Key findings relate to externality (people's happiness depends on what others have) mistakes (which arise from ignorance or misforecasting of happiness), and tastes (which are not exogenous but affected by public policy). In this special issue the author discusses how to modify the traditional framework to allow for these uncomfortable facts, and how to exploit our new knowledge abo...
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作者：Machin, Stephen; McNally, Sandra
作者单位：University of London; University College London; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：In countries like the UK and the US, a significant and challenging problem facing educators is how to ensure that future generations do not suffer from the severe basic skills problems that currently hinder a sizeable group of adults. We look at a primary school programme introduced into English schools, the literacy hour, to work out whether changing the structure and content of teaching can enhance literacy skills, thus acting as a tool to alleviate problems of low literacy. Our results poin...
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作者：Snyder, James M., Jr.; Ting, Michael M.
作者单位：Columbia University; Columbia University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：We develop a model of interest group influence in the presence of repeated electoral competition. In each period of the game, an interest group attempts to buy an incumbent's policy choice, and a voter chooses whether to replace the incumbent with an unknown challenger. The voter faces a tension between retaining good politician types and rewarding past performance. The model predicts that above average incumbents face little discipline, but others are disciplined increasingly - and re-elected...
