Kåre Petter Hagen

How do middle-aged employees combine work with caring for elderly parents?

How common is it for elderly employees to experience a squeeze between work and care obligations for their parents, and to what extent does this affect their behaviour in working life? To illuminate these questions, this article presents findings from a representative survey conducted in Norway in 2007. One finding is that seven out of 10 respondents (with one or both parents still living) are both employed and caring for their elderly parents. Fifty-seven percent have experienced difficult situations in coping with both. The most preferable arrangement is flexible working hours. Employees prefer the possibility to reduce or stagger working hours, or the option to work from home if necessary.

Positive second-best theory: A brief survey of the theory of ramsey pricing

Publisher Summary This chapter surveys issues in positive second-best theory, specifically the theory of the optimal pricing of goods produced by public firms—that is, firms whose objective is the maximization of social welfare. It is assumed that these firms, characteristically, display increasing returns to scale. In these situations, first-best optima may require lump-sum taxes and subsidies. In view of the size of the public sector in most industrialized countries, it is difficult to imagine that public activities can be financed without distortionary effects elsewhere in the economy. The chapter assumes perfect possibilities for lump-sum income transfers to focus on the efficiency aspect of optimal pricing. If lump-sum redistribution is impossible, deviations from marginal costs for prices under public control may be motivated by distributional considerations—that is, the government may want to use its excise tax power to improve the income distribution. The chapter provides general formulation that forms a basis for special cases that are analyzed in more detail subsequently. It also discusses the joint decision for the optimal supply of public goods and the pricing problem. Finally, it analyzes some issues in predation and Ramsey pricing in a dynamic context.

Taxation and investment behaviour under uncertainty — A multiperiod portfolio analysis

This paper deals with the effects of a proportional income tax with full loss offset provisions on optimal investment behaviour under uncertainty. For convenience we only consider investments in two assets: one risky asset with a random rate of return and one riskless asset with a secure rate of return. We shall see that for a certain class of intertemporal preferences the total tax effects on the optimal investment in the risky asset can be separated in a saving effect and a portfolio effect with the former influencing the optimal level of savings and the latter influencing the composition of the optimal savings, i.e., the choice between investments in the risky and riskless asset.