This paper studies how congestion in the public health sector can be used as a redistributive tool. In our model, agents differ in income and they can obtain a health service either from a congested public hospital or from a non congested private one at a higher price. With pure in-kind redistribution, agents fail to internalize their impact on congestion, and the demand for the public hospital...

This paper studies the testable implications of consumption-based asset pricing models with incomplete markets when idiosyncratic income shocks are permanent. It is shown that the theory places no testable restrictions (beyond absence of arbitrage) on either the macroeconomic data or the first N moments of the cross-sectional distribution of consumption growth even if the one-period utility fun...

Five Crossroads on the Way to Basic Income: An Italian Tour The current Italian income support policies are defective with respect to both efficiency and equity. A more effective design must face five crucial choices: universal vs. categorical policies; transfers vs. subsidies; unconditional vs. means-tested policies; coverage; flat vs. progressive tax rules. Using a microeconometric model and ...

We optimize the asset allocation, consumption and bequest decisions of an investor with uncertain lifetime and under time-varying investment opportunities. The asset menu is given by stocks, zero coupon bonds and pure endowments with different maturities. The latter are contingent on either a single or a joint life, and pay fixed or variable benefits. We further include transaction costs on sto...

a r t i c l e i n f o Australian urban transport industries experienced substantial reform during the 1990s leading to significant structural change. Urban transport is typically an important expenditure item for households and structural change in these services may affect households differently depending on their position in the distribution of income and expenditure. We estimate the effects ...

Optimality conditions and comparative static properties of the optimal Mirrleesian nonlinear income tax are obtained for a nite population and quasilinear-in-consumption preferences. Contrary to Weymark (1987) who considers quasilinear-in-leisure preferences, the linearity with respect to gross income, which is observed by the government and used as a tax base, is lost. A reduced-form optimal i...

Abstract Approaches to measuring health inequalities are often problematic because they use methods that inappropriate for categorical data. In this paper we focus on “pure” or univariate inequality (rather than income-related bivariate inequality) and a concept of individual status allows consistent treatment such We take alternative versions the apply treating data examine self-assessed count...

This paper considers the effects of changes in the income distribution in an economy where agents’ utility depends both on consumption and on their rank in the distribution of consumption of a positional good. We introduce a new methodology to compare the behavior of agents that occupy the same rank in the two different income distributions but typically have different levels of incomes, and an...

Internation comparisons of average national incomes omit important information about leisure, home production, health, etc. They are also bedevilled by index number problems. This paper suggests ways of combining working hours and life-expectancy with income comparisons, and shows that the fixed-price indexes of real income, such as those in the Penn World Table, substantially understate the in...

Doctors are involved in voluntary service more commonly than both the community and our professional colleagues realise. Traditionally, doctors are seen as busy healers who never stop looking after the sick and/or making a fortune from their daily activities. On the other hand, many in society think doctors are typically earning such high incomes that they can readily afford to volunteer their ...