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Abstract:
This paper considers an optimal income tax cum higher education policy. It shows that in the presence of an optimal income tax system higher education should be taxed rather than subsidized. Furthermore, income taxes should become less progressive when an optimal higher education policy is introduced.

Abstract:
A trade union whose purpose is to raise wages above the competitive level may foster economic growth if it succeeds in shifting income away from the owners of capital to the workers and if the workers' marginal propensity to save exceeds that of capitalists. We make this point in an overlapping generations framework with unionized labor. Considering a monopoly union that cares for wages and employment, we determine a range of trade union objectives and characterize the aggregate technology so that the union's policy spurs per capita income growth and increases the welfare of all generations that adhere to the union.

Trade union, overlapping generations, factor shares, endogenous technical change, employment

Abstract:
A trade union whose purpose is to raise wages above the competitive level may foster economic growth if it succeeds in shifting income away from the owners of capital to the workers and if the workers' marginal propensity to save exceeds the one of capitalists. We make this point in an overlapping generations framework with unionized labor. Considering a monopoly union which cares for wages and employment, we determine a range of trade union objectives and characterize the aggregate technology so that the union's policy spurs per capita income growth and increases welfare of all generations that adhere to the union.

Trade Union, Overlapping Generations, Factor Shares, Endogenous Technical Change, Employment

Abstract:
This paper develops a public education scheme that takes uncertainty aspects of private educational investments explicitly into account. In the author's framework, the social merits of public education schemes are related to the lack of markets in which students can insure against educational risks. A case is made for tuition fees that depend on the expected returns of investments in education. The consideration of uncertainty provides a neglected link between educational choice, resource endowment, and productivity growth, which may serve to redefine the public role of education financing.

Public education, tuition fees, choice under uncertainty

Abstract:
This paper analyzes the intergenerational incidence of wage and consumption taxes imposed to finance a given amount of public expenditures. It employs a continuous time overlapping generations framework to demonstrate that it essentially hinges on the relationship between the age-earnings and age-consumption profiles of the households which generations bear the major burden of wage respectively consumption taxes. Furthermore, the paper points to some political economy implications of the incidence of wage and consumption taxes.

Intergenerational incidence, wage and consumption taxes, life cycle model

Abstract:
In the presence of endogenous growth intergenerational transfer from the young to the old reduce per capita income growth and harm future generations. On the other hand, competitive equilibria are inefficient if externalities sustain long-run growth. This paper shows that if individuals retire in the last period of their life, the inefficiency of the market economy can be removed by an investment subsidy without making the current or future generations worse off only if coupled with intergenerational transfers from the young to the old.

Intergenerational transfers, externalities, endogenous growth

Abstract:
How do national minimum wages affect global economic growth? We address this question in a two-country endogenous growth model with capital mobility that emphasizes a link between wages, savings and growth. We identify the conditions on technology and national preferences that determine whether national minimum wages are a stimulus or an obstacle to growth. Technology matters because it determines the functional distribution of global income as well as output effects associated with the emergence of national unemployment due to minimum wages. Interestingly, differences in national savings propensities do not only affect the strength of the growth effect associated with minimum wages but may even determine its direction.

Minimum wages, endogenous technical change, unemployment, capital mobility

Abstract:
An optimal taxation framework is considered in which part of the population can take advantage of investment in higher education. It is shown that social welfare can sometimes be increased by supplementing linear income taxes with a subsidy to material investment in higher education, but that social welfare can never be increased by supplementing a non-linear income tax with such a subsidy.

Abstract:
This paper studies the macroeconomic impact of private and public intergenerational transfers in the presence of endogenous growth. It focuses on two-sided altruism implying that individuals have both a motive to make gifts to their parents and a motive to leave bequests to their children. The growth effects of social security depend on whether children are making gifts to their parents or parents are leaving bequests to their children. Which of the transfers is operative, in turn, depends on the size of social security benefits. Social security is legislated endogenously. The introduction of a social security program which definitely reduces per capita income growth and harms future generations is contemplated by altruistic individuals even if non-altruistic individuals disapprove it.

Abstract:
A familiar result in the theory of private intergenerational transfers is that competitive equilibria with gifts from children to their parents are dynamically inefficient whereas they are dynamically efficient with bequests from parents to their children. This note demonstrates that if growth is endogenous, both gift and bequest economies are dynamically efficient, but gift economies grow more rapidly.

Abstract:
The paper develops a public education scheme that takes uncertainty aspects of private educational investments explicitly into account. A case is made for tuition fees, which depend on expected return on investments in education. The consideration of uncertainty provides a neglected link between educational choice, resource endowment and productivity growth, that may serve to redefine the public role of education financing.