Suchergebnisse

This paper analyzes subsidies for intracity and intercity commuting in an urban economics framework with two cities and agglomeration externalities, where workers may commute within and between cities. First, commuting subsidies serve to internalize agglomeration externalities: Intracity commuting subsidies give incentives to move to the larger city and intercity commuting subsidies make residents of the periphery commute to the core. Second, if agglomeration rents are locally captured, commuting subsidies act as a welfare enhancing transfer from the core to the periphery.

We study a simple model of commuting subsidies with two transport modes. City residents choose where to live and which mode to use. When all land is owned by city residents, one group gains from subsidies what the other loses. With absentee landownership, city residents as a group gain at the expense of landowners. Subsidies toward different modes have different effects, however, for instance, in one case, rich automobile drivers suffer from transit subsidies, while poor transit users may benefit from subsidies to automobiles.

This paper analyses the effect of federalism on fertility and growth. In a model with human capital accumulation and endogenous fertility, two regimes of education finance are compared: central and local education. Using numerical simulation, I find that local education finance yields higher growth at the price of increased inequality. Aggregate fertility may be lower or higher under federalism. Interestingly, the fertility differential is reversed: while under central finance, rich families have fewer children than poor ones (when the elasticity of substitution between children and consumption is large), the opposite may occur under local finance. The paper also tests the relationship between fertility rates and fiscal decentralisation empirically on a panel of OECD countries and finds a weak negative effect of decentralisation on total and differential (poor minus rich) fertility.

A large literature has claimed that higher political participation increases welfare spending. In this paper, I review this literature. I study the theoretical link between participation and redistributive spending. Then, I survey the empirical literature on the link between education, income and political participation, as well as that between political participation and redistribution.

Dieser Beitrag untersucht den Zusammenhang zwischen Kinderbetreuung, Fertilität und Frauenerwerbstätigkeit. Zunächst wird ein theoretisches Modell vorgestellt, das untersucht, ob eine qualitativ bessere oder billigere (subventionierte) Kinderbetreuung die Fertilität oder das Arbeitsangebot von Frauen erhöht. Danach werden empirische Studien vorgestellt, die diese Zusammenhänge mit aggregierten Daten oder Individualdaten empirisch testen. Am Schluss werden einige Politikimplikationen diskutiert. ; This paper studies the relation between childcare, fertility and female labour force participation. It presents a simple model which analyses whether qualitatively better or cheaper (subsidised) childcare increases fertility and female labour force participation. It then describes empirical studies that analyse these relationships either with aggregate data or with micro-data. Finally, some policy conclusions are discussed.

This paper examines social agglomeration externalities. Using survey data from the German Socioeconomic Panel, it examines the link between city size and different measures of consumption, social interaction and social capital. There is strong evidence of agglomeration effects in consumption, while positive effects of city size on social interaction and social capital variables seem to some extent to be driven by sorting. Further, using responses to satisfaction questions, the paper analyses whether individuals are compensated for diseconomies of agglomeration by positive agglomeration externalities in other areas. This hypothesis cannot be rejected.

This paper models voters' preferences over central versus local education policies when there are private alternatives. Education is financed by income taxes and individuals are mobile between communities. Public education levels are chosen by majority vote. Contrary to conventional wisdom, centralisation may benefit the rich and poor, while the middle class prefer decentralised education. The model is also extended to include peer effects. Peer effects increase the support for central school finance, even in the community with good public schools.

Following Keen and Marchand (1997), the paper analyses the effect of fiscal competition on the composition of public spending in a model where capital and skilled workers are mobile while low skilled workers are immobile. Taxes are levied on capital and labour. Each group of workers benefits from a different kind of public good. Mobility of skilled workers provides an incentive for jurisdictions to spend ?too much? on public goods benefitting the skilled and ?too little? on those benefitting low skilled workers. In the case of capital-skill complementarity, this incentive is strengthened. The analysis is then extended to allow for mobility of unskilled labour.

his paper surveys models of voting on redistribution. Under reasonable assumptions, the baseline model produces an equilibrium with the extent of redistributive taxation chosen by the median income earner; if the median is poorer than average, redistribution is from rich to poor. Increasing inequality increases redistribution. However, under diŽerent assumptions about the economic environment, redistribution may not be simply rich to poor, and inequality need not increase redistribution. Several lines of argument are presented, in particular, political participation, public provision of private goods, public pensions, and tax avoidance or evasion.