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We illustrate a novel informational feature of education, which the government may utilize. Discretionary decisions of individuals to acquire education may serve as an additional signal (to earned labor income) on the underlying unobserved innate earning ability, thereby mitigating the informational constraint faced by the government. We establish a case for taxing education, as a supplement to the labor income tax.

Minimum wage legislation is a standard policy tool in most countries. However, the overall merits of minimum wage are controversial due to its potential adverse effects on unemployment. In this paper we construct a simple model in which minimum wage plays an important re-distributive role, alongside income taxation, without generating adverse effects on unemployment.

The aging of the population shakes the public finance of pay-as-you-go social security systems. We develop a political-economy framework in which this demographic change leads to the downsizing of the social security system, and, as a consequence, to the emergence of supplemental individual retirement programs. Making the balanced-budget rule (of the type of the Stability and Growth Pact in the EU) more flexible, to accommodate a one-shot cost of the social security reforms, is shown to facilitate the political-economy transition from a national to a private pension system, through an endogenously determined shift in the political-economy equilibrium

The implication of increasing dependency ratios for pay–as–you–go, defined–benefit pension programmes are examined. Modifications aimed at smoothing contributions while maintaining benefits intact are analysed for both open and closed economies.(J.E.L.: H2, F3, J1).