Annotated almanac, 1786

Almanac has sporadic annotations and is accompanied by a gathering of unruled paper. The gathering contains entries of baptisms and burials, accounting records and notes of household activities, including entries related to boarders. There is a receipt signed by Sally Robinson for payment of wages by Hannah Winthrop among the entries.

Binding papers, 1775-1928

The binding papers contain lists of volumes bound for the Harvard library in the form of lists and bills. The books are generally identified by title, volume size (octavo, quarto, folio, etc.), or both. The series includes two 18th century documents. The first document is a one-page January 22, 1775 bill to Harvard College from "Dr. And'r Barclay" for the binding and numbering of books. Books are identified by volume size. The second document is a one-page "List of books belonging to the Library which it is necessary should be new-bound" with an initial list signed by James Winthrop the Librarian on December 13, 1786, an additional list made on April 7, 1787, and subsequent notes made in May 1787. The books are indicated by title and size.

Essays in dynamic optimal taxation: working experience, unemployment scarring and poverty

This thesis investigates the design of optimal tax systems in dynamic environments. The first essay characterizes the optimal tax system where wages depend on stochastic shocks and work experience. In addition to redistributive and efficiency motives, the taxation of inexperienced workers depends on a second-best requirement that encourages work experience, a social insurance motive and incentive effects. Calibrations using U.S. data yield higher expected optimal marginal income tax rates for experienced workers for most of the inexperienced workers. They confirm that the average marginal income tax rate increases (decreases) with age when shocks and work experience are substitutes (complements). Finally, more variability in experienced workers' earnings prospects leads to increasing tax rates since income taxation acts as a social insurance mechanism. In the second essay, the properties of an optimal tax system are investigated in a dynamic private information economy where labor market frictions create unemployment that destroys workers' human capital. A two-skill type model is considered where wages and employment are endogenous. I find that the optimal tax system distorts the first-period wages of all workers below their efficient levels which leads to more employment. The standard no-distortion-at-the-top result no longer holds due to the combination of private information and the destruction of human capital. I show this result analytically under the Maximin social welfare function and confirm it numerically for a general social welfare function. I also investigate the use of a training program and job creation subsidies. The final essay analyzes the optimal linear tax system when there is a population of individuals whose perceptions of savings are linked to their disposable income and their family background through family cultural transmission. Aside from the standard equity/efficiency trade-off, taxes account for the endogeneity of perceptions through two channels. First, taxing labor decreases income, which decreases the perception of savings through time. Second, taxation on savings corrects for the misperceptions of workers and thus savings and labor decisions. Numerical simulations confirm that behavioral issues push labor income taxes upward to finance saving subsidies. Government transfers to individuals are also decreased to finance those same subsidies.

Money for structural reforms in the eurozone: making sense of contractual arrangements. Egmont Paper 57, May 2013

Executive Summary. Both the Commission’s proposal for a ‘Competitiveness and Convergence Instrument’ and the ‘contractual arrangement’ presented by President Van Rompuy share a common concept: associating EU money with national structural reforms under a binding arrangement. The targeted ‘structural reforms’ are the labour market reforms and product and services market reforms in eurozone ‘peripheral’ countries facing the most severe external imbalances. Their implementation would speed up and facilitate the ‘internal devaluation’ process of these countries. In the worst case scenario, failure to adopt the necessary reforms and to adjust wages and prices downwards may lead the most vulnerable countries to leave the eurozone under social and political pressure. Contracts seek to reduce this risk by increasing compliance with the country-specific recommendations for structural reforms issued by the EU institutions within the European Semester, and in particular with the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP). As for the financial support, it follows two different, albeit overlapping rationales. First, the perspective of obtaining EU funding would incentivize the governments of vulnerable countries to adopt reforms that would bear a high political and social cost in the short term. That is, without some form of incentive, it is unlikely that the necessary reforms would be undertaken and this could have significant negative consequences for the EMU as a whole. The second rationale amounts to outright solidarity: EU support is needed to cushion the inevitable socio-economic costs implied not only by the structural reform, but also by the internal devaluation taking place. To make sense of contractual arrangements, some points should be considered in future discussions: 1. Contracts on a voluntary basis only: Contracts cannot be mandatory unlike initially suggested in the Van Rompuy report. This stems not only from the inherent definition of a ‘contract’ – where mutual consent is key – but also from the non-binding nature of the preventive arm of the MIP. Making the country-specific recommendations issued by the EU institutions systematically binding would imply transfers of sovereignty from the national to the EU level that go well beyond the present discussion. Instead, contracts would introduce the possibility of making the preventive arm binding for some countries where corrections are most needed and urgent for the EMU as a whole.

Why so few students do maths and science. CEPS Policy Brief No. 313, 10 January 2014

Policy-makers often fret about the low number of university graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Proposed solutions often focus on providing better information for students and parents about the employability or average wages of different fields to emphasise that STEM professions pay. This paper argues that, from a personal point of view, students are actually making rational decisions, if all benefits and costs are factored into the equation. The authors conclude, therefore, that public policy needs to change the incentives to induce students to enter these fields and not just provide information about them.

Forecasting migration between the EU, V4 and Eastern Europe. Impact of visa abolition. OSW Report, July 2014

This book is the result of one year of solid work among a multinational research team assembled from seven states (Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova). It aims at a detailed analysis of migration patterns and migration forecasts from Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova to the EU/V4. In particular, the nexus between EU visa policy and migration dynamics as well as the impact of economic, political and institutional factors on migration from Eastern Europe have been investigated. The importance of migration policy must be stressed here. Together with demand for the foreign labour force (labour market needs, level of wages, existing work opportunities) and migration networks (including ethnic links), migration policy has a powerful influence on the scale, directions and characteristics of human flows.

Regional Wage and Employment Responses to Market Potential in the EU. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 3/November 2005

Recent theoretical work on economic geography emphasizes the interplay of transport costs and plant-level increasing returns. In these models, the spatial distribution of demand is a key determinant of economic outcomes. In one strand, it is argued that higher demand gives rise to a more than proportionate increase in production, a result known as the home market effect. Another strand emphasizes the effects of market sizes on factor prices. We highlight the theoretical connection between these two strands. Using data on 57 European regions, we show how wages and employment respond to differentials in what we call real market potential, a discounted sum of demands derived from the theory.

Determinants of Farm Labour Use: A Comparison between Ireland and Italy. Factor Markets Working Documents No. 60, August 2013

This paper examines the effect of the decoupling of farm direct payments upon the off-farm labour supply decisions of farmers in both Ireland and Italy, using panel data from the Farm Business Survey (REA) and FADN database covering the period from 2002 to 2009 to model these decisions. Drawing from the conceptual agricultural household model, the authors hypothesise that the decoupling of direct payments led to an increase in off-farm labour activity despite some competing factors. This hypothesis rests largely upon the argument that the effects of changes in relative wages have dominated other factors. At a micro level, the decoupling-induced decline in the farm wage relative to the non-farm wage ought to have provoked a greater incentive for off-farm labour supply. The main known competing argument is that decoupling introduced a new source of non-labour income i.e. a wealth effect. This may in turn have suppressed or eliminated the likelihood of increased off-farm labour supply for some farmers. For the purposes of comparative analysis, the Italian model utilises the data from the REA database instead of the FADN as the latter has a less than satisfactory coverage of labour issues. Both models are developed at a national level. The paper draws from the literature on female labour supply and uses a sample selection corrected ordinary least squares model to examine both the decisions of off-farm work participation and the decisions regarding the amount of time spent working off-farm. The preliminary results indicate that decoupling has not had a significant impact on off-farm labour supply in the case of Ireland but there appears to be a significantly negative relationship in the Italian case. It still remains the case in both countries that the wealth of the farmer is negatively correlated with the likelihood of off-farm employment.

Euro-area governance: what to reform and how to do it. Bruegel Policy Brief 2015/01 February 2015

The Issue Reform of the governance of the euro area is being held back by disagreement on what is at the root of the euro area’s woes. Pre-crisis, the euro area suffered from the built-up of financial imbalances, price and wage divergence and an insufficient focus on debt sustainability. During the crisis, the main problems were slow resolution of banking problems, an inadequate fiscal policy stance in 2011-13 for the area as a whole, insufficient domestic demand in surplus countries and slow progress with structural reforms to overcome past divergences. Policy Challenge Euro-area governance needs to move beyond the improvements brought about by banking union and should establish institutions to prevent divergences of wages from productivity. We propose the creation of a European Competitiveness Council composed of national competitiveness councils, and the creation of a Eurosystem of Fiscal Policy (EFP) with two goals: fiscal debt sustainability and an adequate area-wide fiscal position. The EFP should have the right in exceptional circumstances to declare national deficits unlawful and to be able to force parliaments to borrow more so that the euro-area fiscal stance is appropriate. A euro-area chamber of the European Parliament would have to approve such decisions. No additional risk-sharing would be introduced. In the short term, domestic demand needs to be increased in surplus countries, while in deficit countries, structural reform needs to reduce past divergences.

Does the growth in higher education mean a decline in the quality of degrees? CEPS Working Document No. 405/March 2015

In this paper the authors construct a theory about how the expansion of higher education could be associated with several factors that indicate a decline in the quality of degrees. They assume that the expansion of tertiary education takes place through three channels, and show how these channels are likely to reduce average study time, lower academic requirements and average wages, and inflate grades. First, universities have an incentive to increase their student body through public and private funding schemes beyond a level at which they can keep their academic requirements high. Second, due to skill-biased technological change, employers have an incentive to recruit staff with a higher education degree. Third, students have an incentive to acquire a college degree due to employers’ preferences for such qualifications; the university application procedures; and through the growing social value placed on education. The authors develop a parsimonious dynamic model in which a student, a college and an employer repeatedly make decisions about requirement levels, performance and wage levels. Their model shows that if i) universities have the incentive to decrease entrance requirements, ii) employers are more likely to employ staff with a higher education degree and iii) all types of students enrol in colleges, the final grade will not necessarily induce weaker students to study more to catch up with more able students. In order to re-establish a quality-guarantee mechanism, entrance requirements should be set at a higher level.

A House Divided: Employers & the Challenge to Pattern Bargaining in a United Germany. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 05.5, 1994

Recently, increasing numbers of new German firms have begun to break from tradition and refuse to join employers' associations. Simultaneously, an unprecedented portion of affiliates have begun to reconsider employers' association membership. The spectre of declining membership in German employers' associations-century-old pillars of organized capitalism-is particularly noteworthy because of the importance of these institutions to the German economy as a whole. Some observers have attributed this trend to the impact of German unification, yet a careful analysis reveals that its principal causes arose in the decade preceding it. The economic strain of unification, however, has accelerated "association flight'' and has provided dissidents with an unprecedented opportunity to challenge the hegemony of employers' associations over the regulation of wages and working conditions in the Federal Republic.

Falling Labor Share and Rising Unemployment: Long-Run Consequences of Institutional Shocks? CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 00.2, 1999

The literature on unemployment has mostly focused on labor market issues while the impact of capital foonation is largely neglected Job-creation is often thought to be a matter of encouraging more employment on a given capital stock. In contrast, this paper explicitly deals with the long-run consequences of institutional shocks on capital foonation and employment. It is shown that the usual trade off between employment and wages disappears in the long run. In line with an appropriation model, the estimated values for the long-run elasticities of substitution between capital and labor for Germany and France are substantially greater than one.

An Italian job: the need for collective wage bargaining reform. Bruegel Policy Brief ISSUE 2016/11 - JULY 2016

Highlights: Since the mid-1990s, Italy has been characterised by a lack of labour productivity growth, combinedwith a 60 percent growth in labour costs, 20 percentage points above euro-area average consumer price growth. As a consequence, Italy has become less competitive compared to its euro-area partners, the profitability of its firms has dropped and real GDP-per-capita has flatlined. • At the root of the substantial discrepancy between wages and productivity is Italy’s system of centralised wage bargaining which, in many ways, is designed without regard for the underlying industrial structure and geographical heterogeneity of the Italian economy.This has fostered perverse incentives and imbalances within Italy. • Collective wage bargaining, and in particular the determination of base salaries, should be moved from the national to the regional level for all contracts, in the public and private sectors.The Mezzogiorno,which might superficially be seen as losing out from this policy, would actually gain the most in competitiveness terms. • Furthermore, measures should be taken so that, in the long run, the Italian industrial structure evolves into a less fragmented small-company-based economy. This firm consolidation would likely expand the use of firm-level agreements and performance payments, and would improve Italy’s productivity and competitiveness overall.

Three Essays on the Economics of International Migration [electronic resource].

requirements for Filipino performing artists, effectively closing this migration channel. I employ a difference-in-differences estimation strategy using the share of performing artists at baseline in each Philippine province as a continuous policy variable. International migration falls in response to the policy change by 1.2%. The effect on international migration is larger than the policy change itself would suggest, indicating the importance of spillovers across migrant occupations. Domestically, more children are employed, and adults are more likely to be unemployed or engaged in short-term work.

The Jewel cutting and polishing industry in Puerto Rico.

Cover title.