Government Debt as Insurance against Macroeconomic Risk Is there a role for debt beyond curing overaccumulation of capital? Does dynamic efficiency and the infeasibility of debt Ponzi schemes eliminate any Pareto-improving role for a government in a competitive economy with complete markets? Is there an optimal maturity structure of public debt? Using a stochastic Diamond OLG model, we tackle t...

Dynamic Efficiency and Pareto Optimality in a Stochastic OLG Model with Production and Social Security We analyze the interaction between risk sharing and capital accumulation in a stochastic OLG model with production. We give a complete characterization of interim Pareto optimality. Our characterization also subsumes equilibria with a PAYG social security system. In a competitive equilibrium i...

Is Job Stability in the United States Falling? Reconciling Trends in the Current Population Survey and Panel Study of Income Dynamics Documenting trends in job stability over the past twenty-five years has become a controversial exercise. The two main sources of information on employer tenure, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the Current Population Survey (CPS), have generally give...

The Insider-Outsider Theory: A Survey This article is an idiosyncratic survey of the insider-outsider theory, describing the vision underlying the theory, and evaluating salient contributions to the literature in the light of this vision. We also indicate what appear to have been dead-ends and red herrings in past research. The first section deals with the theory, concerning how labor turnover ...

This Discussion Paper is issued within the framework of IZA's research area 0RELOLW\ DQGG)OH[LELOLW\ RII /DERUU 0DUNHWV Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of the institute. Research disseminated by IZA may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and ...

The PERSONAL SOCIAL SERVICES RESEARCH UNIT undertakes social and health care research, supported mainly by the United Kingdom Department of Health, and focusing particularly on policy research and analysis of equity and efficiency in community care, long-term care and related areas — including services for elderly people, people with mental health problems and children in care. The PSSRU was es...

This Discussion Paper is issued within the framework of IZA's research area 0RELOLW\\ DQGG)OH[LELOLW\\RII/DERUU0DUNHWV Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of the institute. Research disseminated by IZA may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and v...

Joint Labour Supply Dynamics of Older Couples This paper studies the labour force participation dynamics of older couples in the United States. Longitudinal data from the five available waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is used to investigate if the dynamics introduced by considering both spouses’ behavior provide additional information in trying to fit observed participation seque...

The Sexual Harassment of Female Active-Duty Personnel: Effects on Job Satisfaction and Intentions to Remain in the Military This paper examines the relationship between sexual harassment and the job satisfaction and intended turnover of active-duty women in the U.S. military using unique data from a survey of the incidence of unwanted gender-related behavior conducted by the U.S. Department of ...

How Does Imperfect Competition in the Labor Market Affect Unemployment Policies? We consider a continuum of workers ranked according to their abilities to acquire education and two firms with different technologies that imperfectly compete in wages to attract these workers. Once employed, each worker bears an education cost proportional to his/her initial ability, this cost being higher in the ...