The aging of the American population will be a critical public policy issue in the years ahead. This paper surveys the recent literature on the economics of aging, with a special emphasis on government spending on the aged. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that the proportion of the elderly in...

Background: Bayesian regularization can address over-parameterization of age-period-cohort (APC) mortality models, facilitated by a new methodology for comparing fits of Bayesian regularized models. Here Bayesian Lasso is used to shrink slope changes in linear spline fits of the parameters of...

This paper presents a simple two-period overlapping generation's model with uncertain lifetimes that contains environmental and health issues. It investigates an intergenerational conflict between old and young generations as regards two defensive expenditures, offsetting the influence of a...

If health care expenditure for the elderly grows faster than for younger people, the expenditure profiles become steeperʺ we call that "steepingʺ. Three instruments for measuring steepingʺ are presented: (1) trend of the relation between per-capita-expenditure of the old and the young; (2)...

This paper discusses the relationship between medical innovations and ageing from a health economics perspective and surveys empirical evidence on medical R&D incentives, R&D costs of pharmaceuticals, and the cost-effectiveness of health innovations. Particular focus is on the endogeneity of...