Modelling vintage structures with DDEs: principles and applications

A comprehensive study of the linkages between demographic and economic variables should not only account for vintage specificity but also incorporate the relevant economic and demographic decisions in a complete optimal control set-up. In this paper, a methodological set-up allowing to reach these objectives is described. In this framework, time is continuous but agents take discrete timing decisions. The mixture of continuous and discrete time yields differential-difference equations (DDEs). This paper shows clearly that the approach allows for a relatively complete and rigorous analytical exploration in some special cases (mainly linear or quasi linear models), and for an easy computational appraisal in the general case.