1,721,029 research outputs found
Aging, retirement and social security in a model of interest groups
No full textWhat is the influence of aging on the duration of retirement and on social security transfers? A model of political economy permits to investigate the duration of retirement and the social security transfer at equilibrium with the total number of elderly. In an overlapping generation model with interest groups, an increase in the proportion of elderly tends to increase the total social security transfers. However, if the pressure exerted by a group is described by a function with decreasing marginal returns to size, an increase in the number of elderly decreases the duration of retirement and may decrease the per head social security transfer. © Taylor & Francis Inc
Aging and retirement: Evidence across countries
No full textHow do demographic factors influence retirement? Using a large cross-country data set, I show that in countries with a larger share of elderly in their population the length of retirement is longer. This result holds true if I control for wealth effects, and when the effective labor force participation rate of the elderly is used instead of the official retirement age. Retirement policies and the social security size are strictly related: a new variable, representing the aggregate relevance of retirement policies, turns out to be significant in explaining the size of social security. Finally, the total amount of social security transfers is positively related with the increase of the elderly population, while in per capita terms this relation is not significant
Retirement and social security in a probabilistic voting model
No full textWhy are social security transfers associated with retirement rules? This paper focuses on the political interactions between retirement and social security. Using a probabilistic voting approach, it analyzes why old people are induced to retire in order to receive pension transfers from the young. A crucial hypothesis is that leisure in old age represents a "merit good," which is positively valued by all agents in the society, young and old. Thus, the politicians choose to tax the labor income of the old, to induce them to retire. Retirement increases the level of ideological homogeneity of the old. In fact, once retired, the elderly are more "single-minded," since they only care about redistributive issues, such as pensions. This increase in their political power allows them to win the political game and to receive a positive transfer from the young (social security)
La diversity di genere nelle aziende familiari: una risorsa da valorizzare
No full textL'articolo presenta i risultati di una ricerca sulla presenza delle donne nelle aziende familiari italiane medie e grandi e offre alcune riflessioni interpretative e proposte di maggior valorizzazione della diversità di genere nelle aziende stess
Redistribution or education?: the political economy of the social race
Full text linkIn an overlapping generations model with two social classes, rich and poor, parents of the different social classes vote on two issues: redistributive policies for them and education investments for their kids. Public education is the engine for growth through its effect on human capital; but it is also the vehicle through which kids born from poor families may exchange their positions with kids born from rich families. This is because education reduces the probability of the mismatch, i.e. individuals with low talent but coming from rich families being placed in jobs which should be reserved to people with high talent (and vice-versa). We find a political economy equilibrium of the voting game using probabilistic voting. When the poor are more politically influent, the economy is characterized by a higher level of education, growth and social mobility than under political regimes supported by the rich; pretax inequality is greater in the first case, but post-tax is lower
The political economy of social security: A survey
No full textThis paper surveys the literature on the political economy of social security. We review models that address the following questions: (i) Why do social security programs that transfer resources from young and middle-aged workers to the elderly exist? (ii) What are the economic and political interactions between social security systems and other redistributive programs of the welfare state? (iii) How does political sustainability shape social security systems in a dynamic economic and demographic environment, and which social security reforms are politically feasible? We characterize this literature along two lines: economic factors and political institutions. We then assess the empirical relevance of the models by comparing their implications to stylized social security facts. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
Main features of tax systems in Latin American countries
No full textThis paper provides an overview of the tax system in Latin American
countries and its main features. We collect data and analyze the
main trends of the evolution of fiscal burden and tax structure from the
1990s and we focus on the effects of taxation on income redistribution
and equality, tax evasion and tax compliance. This helps us to underline
that the tax systems of Latin American countries do not signifi66
cantly contribute to the reduction of income inequality: Gini post tax
coefficients continue to be very high, implying that the higher tax burden
is especially born by low income taxpayers
A further comment on ageing and the welfare state
No full textThis symposium was initiated as a forum for discussion of issues about ageing and the welfare state stemming from the paper by Razin, Sadka, and Swagel, "The ageing population and the size of the welfare state", which appeared in the Journal of Political Economy in 2002 (vol. 110 (4) pp. 900-918). We here comment on the contribution of Razin and Sadka to the symposium. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
The political economy of taxation: lessons from developing countries
No full textTaxation is a major issue in economics and politics. We focus on a sample of countries which have experienced an economic and a democratic transition in Asia and Latin America for the period 1990-2004. Using a new large dataset we find that tax revenue is higher in more democratic regimes, consistently with the standard view that democracies have to satisfy the redistributive needs of the electorate. A final relationship between the level of democracy and the composition of taxes (mainly direct versus indirect) is instead much less clear to predict. A comparison with New EU members countries suggests that more mature democracies are associated with a higher level of direct taxes
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