On Substituting Consumption Taxes for Unemployment Insurance Contributions to Reduce Unemployment

The German conservative party (consisting of two sister parties) planned in case of victory in the national election on 18 September 2005 to reduce the unemployment insurance contributions by 2 percent and to finance this with an increase in the consumption tax by 2 percent. The present paper shows in a Layard-Nickell-Jackman type wage bargaining model that this tax reform does not reduce unemployment; neither in the short to medium run, nor in the long run. When there is short-to-medium-run real wage resistance, then in the short to medium run unemployment depends on the overall tax burden, but not on the composition of the tax burden. In the long run the wage setting curve is vertical and hence in the long run unemployment is even invariant of the overall tax burden.Consumption taxes, unemployment insurance contributions, payroll taxes. wage bargaining, unemployment.

Youth Dependency, Institutions, and Economic Growth

The present paper shows empirically that the youth dependency ratio (the population below working age divided by the population of working age) reduces economic growth even after controlling for institutions. The institutional variable, the paper controls for, is the measure for institutions that is recently preferred in prominent work by Acemoglu and co-authors. Institutions turn out to have a significant and positive effect on economic growth. The significance of the youth dependency ratio and of institutions appears to be robust to controlling for various variables, including malaria prevalence. Hence, the paper finds evidence that demography, as well as institutions, both matter for economic growth.Economic Growth; Fertility; Age structure effects.

An explanation of the positive correlation between fertility and female employment across Western European countries

Recent literature shows the puzzling result of a positive and significant cross-country correlation between the total fertility rate and the female labour force participation rate across Western European countries. The present paper shows that this cross-country correlation becomes negative and significant, once one corrects the total fertility rate for a distortion, caused by an increasing age of childbearing, and controls in cross-country regressions for purchased child care use and female long-term unemployment. This result survives an empirical analysis in which the female labour force participation rate is treated as an endogenous variable.Total fertility rate; female labour force participation rate; purchased child care; female unemployment.

Swedish Family Policy, Fertility and Female Wages

Recent demographic literature shows in Swedish micro-level data a positive effect of female wage income or female education on fertility. The literature explains this finding with Swedish family policies of high subsidies for bought-in child care and generous parental leave benefits that are calculated on the basis of a woman's prior wage income. Both policies would cause the substitution effect from an increase in female wages on fertility to be dominated by its income effect. This paper shows within an economic model that there are offsetting effects from Swedish family policy that cause the reduction in the magnitude of the substitution effect of female wages to be most likely rather small.Fertility; family policy; gender equality.

Agricultural productivity growth and escape from the Malthusian trap

Industrialization allowed the industrialized world of today to escape from a regime characterized by low economic and population growth and to enter a regime of hihg economic and population growth. To explain this transion of regime, we construct a two-sector growth model with endogenous fertility and endogenous technological progress in the manufacturing sector. With this structure our model is able to replicate the stylized facts of the British industrial revolution. In addition, we show that industrialization requires rising growth of agricultural total factor productivity. This result is in marked contrast to previous work within a similar framework - but with a constant population - wich came to the conclusion that industrialization requires merely a rising level of agricultural total factor productivity. We conclude by illustrating that our proposed model framework can be extended to also include the demographic transition, i.e., a regime where economic growth may lead to decreasing fertility. (AUTHORS)Malthusian theory, demographic transition, economic growth, population growth

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1.

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field