Any contribution to a pay-as-you-go pension system may be considered mandatory savings to the extent that it gives a claim to a future benefit. Contributors to the economic literature have argued that an increase in this savings component will lower implicit marginal tax rates, thereby reducing...

A much higher old-age dependency ratio, together with more generous pension benefits, will lead to a substantial increase in the future public pension expenditures burden in Norway. A pension reform implemented from 2010 will imply a shift to a quasi-actuarial system, seeking to neutralise the...

In a stochastic economy with overlapping generations, fiscal policy affects the allocation of aggregate risks. The paper shows how to compute the welfare effects of marginal policy changes that shift risk across cohorts, in general and for an application to social security equity investments. I...

This paper studies the optimal trade-off between commitment and flexibility in an intertemporal consumption/savings choice model. Individuals expect to receive relevant information regarding their own situation and tastes - generating a value for flexibility - but also expect to suffer from...

How far is the US social insurance system from an efficient system? We answer this question within a model where agents receive idiosyncratic, labor-productivity shocks that are privately observed. When social security and income taxation comprise the social insurance system, the maximum...

The discrete choice model of McFadden (1973) is used to quantify the desire for going into rehabilitation or disability among fully employed married women in Norway. Predictions using the model indicate that as much as 60 percent of full-time employed married women going into disability or...