This paper examines the impact of immigration on a host country with welfare state arrangements that support both the unemployed and the elderly. It is shown that low-skilled immigration increases the unemployment rate. Furthermore, it harms the low-skilled native population and benefits the high-skilled natives and pensioners. Nevertheless, as under competitive labor markets, immigration generates an unambiguous gain for the native population as a whole. However, in contrast to the findings under full employment, this gain can be dampened by an expansion of the pension system.

This paper studies the growth and efficiency effects of pay-as-you-go financed social security when human capital is the engine of growth. Employing a variant of the Lucas (1988) model with overlapping generations, it is shown that a properly designed unfunded social security system leads to higher output growth than a fully funded one. Furthermore, the economy with unfunded social security is efficient while the other one is not. These results stand in sharp contrast to those that obtain in models where economic growth is driven by physical capital accumulation.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This paper explores the impact of university funding reform on teaching quality competition. It shows that a graduate tax with differentiated, but state-regulated fees maximises the higher education surplus, whereas student grants as well as pure and income contingent loans do not. Fee autonomy for universities leads to results inferior to properly state controlled fees and can make the majority of students even worse off than a central student assignment system with very poor teaching incentives. JEL-Classification: H52, I22, L13 Terms of use: Documents in

No abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The birth of children often shifts the power balance within a family. If family decisions are made according to the spouses' welfare function, this shift in power may lead to a time consistency problem. The allocation of resources after the birth of children may differ from the ex-ante optimal choice. In a model of cooperative decision making within a family, we show that this time consistency problem leads to a systematic downward bias in fertility choices. By keeping fertility low, families try to mitigate the ex-ante undesired shift in the power balance. This bias in fertility choices provides scope for welfare enhancing policy intervention. We discuss the extent to which existing measures in family policy are suitable to overcome the fertility bias. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor mayJEL-Code: D130, H310, J130.