No abstract

We examine the impact of social rewards in an unemployment insurance context. A social norm requires effort in proportion to perceived talent, but individuals cunningly choose effort so as to manipulate the perception of their talent. The model predicts that low talented individuals increase effort in response to more generous unemployment insurance. The welfare consequences of the social rewards are ambiguous. Social rewards boost effort, but for individuals with low talent more than any real economic concern can justify. Moreover, the distribution of social respect is slanted in favour of the more talented.

The empirical evidence suggests that parents use inter vivos gifts (i.e., transfers of tangible and financial property) to compensate less well off children whereas post mortem bequests are divided equally among siblings. We study a theoretical model assuming, first, that the amounts given is private information, only known to the donor and the donee, while the amounts bequeathed is public information. Second, we assume that parents care about the reputation that their bequest behavior will leave them after their death. More specifically, this reputation is deteriorating in the difference in amounts inherited. We show that, given these assumptions, the optimal choice of altruistic parents is compensatory gifts and equal bequests.JEL: D10, D31, D63, D64.

We investigate two-bracket piecewise linear income tax structures. In a two-class economy, Pareto-efficient tax schedules of this type feature at least one marginal tax rate equal to zero, and that the marginal tax rate may be increasing and declining. We then investigate the optimal structure of taxation when the social welfare function, utility function and distribution of abilities are characterized as in the standard optimal linear income tax problem. In all cases the second marginal tax rate is less than the first rate but progressivity, in the sense of a uniformly rising average tax rate, generally obtains.

This study is a replication of "Are Muslim Immigrants Different in terms of Cultural Integration?" by Alberto Bisin, Eleonora Patacchini, Thierry Verdier and Yves Zenou, published in Journal of European Economic Association, 6, 445-456, 2008. Bisin et al. (2008 report that they have 5963 observations in their study. Using their empirical setup, we can only identify 1901 relevant observations in the original data. After removing missing values we are left with 818 observations. We cannot replicate any of their results and our estimations yield no support for their claims.