Départ à la retraite d'un point de vue de la taxation optimale

Pour expliquer les départs précoces à la retraite, on utilise le concept de taxation implicite sur tout prolongement de l'activité. De là à proposer que l'on élimine cette taxe, il n'y qu'un pas à franchir. Cette contribution montre que si le système de retraite se veut redistributif et que le gouvernement n'observe pas certaines caractéristiques associées aux individus, une certaine taxe implicite sur l'âge de la retraite est inévitable. Notre analyse se concentre aussi sur les moyens de limiter cette taxe implicite.

On the public economics of annuities with differential mortality

uncertain lifetime, redistribution, annuities, nonlinear taxation

Collective annuities and redistribution

In a number of countries one observes a steady decline in defined benefits pensions schemes,public or private, funded or unfunded, and a simultaneous expansion of defined contributionsplans. One of the consequences of this trend is to deprive individuals at the time of theirretirement from the benefit of collective annuitization. Collective annuities can be distinguished from individual ones in two ways. First, they tend to be cheaper because of their scale and because of inefficiencies in private annuity markets. Second they redistribute resources from short-lived to long-lived individuals. Our paper studies the role of collective annuities. Both their redistributive incidence and efficiency aspects are accounted for. We assume that lifetime is uncertain and that there is a positive correlation between longevity and earnings. Collective annuitization (in part or in total) can be imposed on private savings or it can be "bundled" with a redistributive pension scheme. We show that the case for applying collective annuitization to private savings is weak. The case is stronger when collective annuities are associated with redistributive pensions. However, even in that case, collective annuitization may mitigate the redistributive benefits associated with the pension system.annuities, public pensions, differential longevity

Health Care Providers Payments Regulation when Horizontal and Vertical Differentiation Matter

This paper analyzes the regulation of payment schemes for health care providers competing in both quality and product differentiation of their services. The regulator uses two instruments: a prospective payment per patient and a cost reimbursement rate. When the regulator can only use a prospective payment, the optimal price involves a trade-off between the level of quality provision and the level of horizontal differentiation. If this pure prospective payment leads to underprovision of quality and overdifferentiation, a mixed reimbursement scheme allows the regulator to improve the allocation efficiency. This is true for a relatively low level of patients’transportation costs. We also show that if the regulator cannot commit to the level of the cost reimbursement rate, the resulting allocation can dominate the one with full commitment. In particular, some cost reimbursement might be optimal even for higher levels of transportation costs.

Doctors´ remuneration schemes and hospital competition in two-sided markets with common network externalities

ABSTRACT: This paper uses a two-sided market model of hospital competition to study the implications of different remunerations schemes on the physicians'side. The two-sided market approach is characterized by the concept of common network externality (CNE)introduced by Bardey et al. (2010). This type of externality occurs when occurs when both sides value, possibly with different intensities, the same network externality. We explicitly introduce effort exerted by doctors. By increasing the number of medical acts (which involves a costly effort) the doctor can increase the quality of service offered to patients (over and above the level implied by the CNE). We first consider pure salary,capitation or fee-for-service schemes. Then, we study schemes that mix fee-for-service with either salary or capitation payments. We show that salary schemes (either pure or in combination with fee-for-service) are more patient friendly than (pure or mixed)capitations schemes. This comparison is exactly reversed on the providers'side. Quite surprisingly, patients always loose when a fee-for-service scheme is introduced (pure of mixed). This is true even though the fee-for-service is the only way to induce the providers to exert effort and it holds whatever the patients'valuation of this effort. In other words, the increase in quality brought about by the fee-for-service is more than compensated by the increase in fees faced by patients.Two-Sided markets, Common Network Externality, Providers'remuneration schemes.

Income taxation of couples and the tax unit choice

This paper studies the optimal non linear income tax of couples. We build a general unitary model of labor supply and allow multidimensional heterogeneity in a discrete type framework. We concentrate our analysis on the resulting intra-family labor allocation of labor supplies and show that this analysis is strongly related to the choice of the tax unit (individual versus joint taxation). We give a necessary condition to have fully joint taxation in this framework and discuss some examples.

Social Security, Retirement Age and Optimal Income Taxation

It is often argued that implicit taxation on continued activity of elderly workers is responsible for the widely observed trend towards early retirement. In a world of laissez-faire or of first-best efficiency, there would be no such implicit taxation. The point of this paper is that when first-best redistributive instruments are not available, because some variables are not observable, the optimal policy does imply a distortion of the retirement decision. Consequently, the inducement of early retirement may be part of the optimal tax-transfer policy. We consider a model in which individuals differ in their productivity and their capacity to work long and choose both their weekly labor supply and their age of retirement. We characterize the optimal non linear tax-transfer that maximizes a utilitarian welfare function when weekly earnings and the length of active life are observable while individuals’ productivity and health status are not observable.

Income Taxation of Couples and the Tax Unit Choice

This paper studies the optimal non linear income tax of couples. We build a general unitary model of labor supply and allow multidimensional heterogeneity in a discrete type framework. We concentrate our analysis on the resulting intra-family labor allocation of labor supplies and show that this analysis is strongly related to the choice of the tax unit (individual versus joint taxation). We give a necessary condition to have fully joint taxation in this framework and discuss some examples.