How does a household's economic situation vary with the number of children in it? The most recent papers in the cross-national literature on the effects of children on the economic status of households have had either of two preoccupations. One is child poverty, the topic of a recent major conference (Koen Vleminckx and Timothy Smeeding, 2001). The other concerns the impact of children on the e...

This paper investigates the effects of the various systems of tradeable allowances for CO2-emissions in the Netherlands. These effects are compared with those of raising and adapting the current energy taxes. The results show that a hybrid emissions system (with a absolute cap for sheltered sectors and a relative cap for exposed sectors) performs best in terms of a net national income measure o...

An assessment of current available data on income inequality, at global, international and national levels.

The literature on British economic history presumes that Britain was a free trader after the repeal of the Corn Laws and that her tariff levels were thus below those which were optimal for maximizing utility. Presumably, if the optimal British tariff had been positive and greater than the levels established by mid-century, a reduction to zero of all tariffs that remained would have lowered Brit...

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with level of PT is the average gap between the first and second most popular parties. Regardless of electoral system, which has little association with it, this is the party system variable that is most closely linked with level of PT. It is this form of party system competitiveness that best fosters PT. In terms of elite strategy, grand coalitions very obviously provide the most effective way...

Internation comparisons of average national incomes omit important information about leisure, home production, health, etc. They are also bedevilled by index number problems. This paper suggests ways of combining working hours and life-expectancy with income comparisons, and shows that the fixed-price indexes of real income, such as those in the Penn World Table, substantially understate the in...

BEA is studying proposals to change the treatment of insurance services in the national accounts. There are 5 proposed changes: investment income will be added as a supplement to the premiums paid by policyholders; investment income is to include interest, dividends and capital gains; a measure of expected investment income will be incorporated; a measure of expected claims will be incorporated...