ESSAYS ON PUBLIC FINANCE: RETIREMENT BEHAVIOR AND DISASTER RELIEF

摘要: The dissertation consists of three self-contained essays on Public Finance.“News Droughts, News Floods and U.S. Disaster Relief” studies the mass media's influence government response to about 5,000 natural disasters in developing countries 1968-2002. These took around 63,000 lives affected 125 million people per year. Given huge losses involved, it is essential that disaster relief provided those most need. We show depends occurrence other newsworthy events at time disaster, such as Olympic Games or O.J. Simpson Trial, which are obviously unrelated argue only plausible explanation for this decisions driven by news coverage disasters, crowded out events.“Fiscal Policy Retirement Twentieth Century” proposes a model explains trend labor supply among older workers through changes fiscal policy, including social security. essay re-introduces security major determinant retirement behavior, while simultaneously offering an two main puzzles literature: (i) small contemporary elasticities (ii) drop age prior introduction security.“Sustainable Fiscal Decision” concerns sustainability policy aging economies decision. develops applied general equilibrium model, where endogenous current future demographic developments. Three policies analyzed: (1) raising taxes (2) reducing replacement rate (3) Full Age. All found have substantial impact retirement. Sustaining will result falling interest rates, inducing delay This effect can be substantially larger than direct changing incentives.