The essay analyzes in an overlapping-generations model, to which extent a pay-as-you-go pension system will be the outcome of majority voting, given specific institutional set-ups. Clearly, the vote of an active person depends on his expectations about how the present decision (i.e., his...

It is argued that the theory of the optimal majority for public decision making in its standard formulation is insufficient as a tool to analyze the relationship between different optimal majorities for different kinds of decisions. The theory is reformulated and conditions for optimal...

We characterize and study the relationship between income redistributions that are just and stable. We assume that for a given economy there exists a set of possible income redistributions, the constitution of the economy. The choice of redistribution is in the hands of the agents, who decide by...