We use a general equilibrium model to study the impact of fully funding social security on the distribution of consumption across cohorts and over time. In an initial stationary equilibrium with an unfunded social security system, the capital-output ratio, debt-output ratio, and rate of return to capital are 3.2, 0.6 and 6.8%, respectively. In our rst experiment, we suddenly terminate social se...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the use of time intervals in the treatment of fractured femurs as indicators of the quality of trauma systems. METHODS Time intervals from injury to admission, admission to surgery and surgery to discharge for patients with isolated femur fractures in four low- and middle-income countries were compared with the corresponding values from one German hospital, an Israeli...

This paper presents the results of a pilot study that was carried out with the aim of examining the awareness of e-government in Yemen. It also investigates the impact of the demographic variables such as age, gender, education, occupation, income and living place on the Yemeni citizens' awareness and perceptions about e-government. Close-ended questions were asked to provide information a...

This paper examines the properties of the optimal nonlinear income tax when preferences are quasilinear in leisure and heterogeneous. Individuals differ in their ability and in their preferences for leisure. The government seeks to redistribute income. It can perfectly observe the level of endogenous income but cannot observe either ability or preferences. The heterogeneity of preferences leads...

Redistributive policies often sustain inefficient economic sectors. Economists routinely argue that governments should let the sectors collapse, and compensate the affected agents. We explain why governments may instead prefer the inefficient redistribution. If income shocks in a given sector are more correlated than in the rest of the economy, and redistribution is related to individuals’ inco...

We ask whether attitudes toward government play a causal role in the evasion of U.S. personal income taxes. We first use individual-level survey data to demonstrate a link between sharing the party of the president and trust in the administration generally and opinions on taxation and spending policy, more specifically. Next, we move to the county level, and measure tax behavior as elections, d...

This paper examines optimal income tax progressivity when avoidance responses to taxation are important, and can be controlled at some cost by the government. A simple example shows that ignoring the fact that avoidance can be controlled that the leak in Okun’s bucket can be fixed can lead to misleading implications about the optimal degree of tax rate progressivity. The paper then generalizes ...

In the past three decades, farm families have relied on government payments and off-farm income to reduce income risk and increase total household income. Many studies have analyzed the role of government payments; however, little is known about the impact of health insurance coverage on labor allocation. This study builds on previous literature by using copulas to test for dependence in the la...

We study the impact of incentive pay, local development objectives and government constraints on university licensing performance. We develop and test a simple contracting model of technology licensing offices, using new survey information together with panel data on U.S. universities for 1995-99. We find that private universities are much more likely to adopt incentive pay than public ones, bu...

We ask whether attitudes toward government play a causal role in the evasion of U.S. personal income taxes. We first use individual-level survey data to demonstrate a link between sharing the party of the president and trust in the administration generally and opinions on taxation and spending policy, more specifically. Next, we move to the county level, and measure tax behavior as elections, d...