In an analysis of the risk-sharing properties of different types of pension systems, we show that only fixed-fee pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension systems can provide risk sharing for living individuals. Under some circumstances, however, other PAYG pension systems can enhance the expected welfare of...

We explore voluntary participation in pension arrangements. Individuals only participate when participation is more attractive than autarky. The benefit of participation is that risks can be shared with future generations. We apply our analysis to a pay-as-you-go system, a funded system without...

This Paper analyses the general equilibrium implications of reforming pay-as-you-go pension systems in an economy with heterogeneous agents, human capital investment and capital-skill complementarity. It shows that increasing funding in the long-run delivers higher physical and human capital and...

An unfunded Social Security system faces a major risk, sometimes referred to as ‘political risk’. In order to account properly for this risk, the paper considers a political process in which the support to the system is asked from each newborn generation. The analysis is conducted in an...

It is shown that the net fiscal externality created by an additional member of a pay-as-you-go-pension system that is endowed with individual accounts equals the gross contributions of this member. In Germany, this equals about 175,000 Deutsche marks. The paper uses this information to design a...

We use all available waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances to document the evolution of the wealth distribution in the US since the 1980s. We then rely on the shape of this distribution to estimate a life-cycle incomplete markets model. We find that considering a wide range of net-worth...

This paper documents a stylized fact not well appreciated in the literature. The Third World has been undergoing an emigration life cycle since the 1960s, and, except for Africa, emigration rates have been level or even declining since a peak in the late 1980s the early 1990s. The current...

This paper analyzes optimal linear taxes on capital and labour incomes in a life-cycle model of human capital investment, financial savings, and labour supply with heterogenous individuals. A dual income tax with a positive marginal tax rate on not only labour income but also capital income is...

The purpose of this paper is to link the propensity for innovative activity to cluster spatially to the stage of the industry life cycle. The theory of knowledge spillovers, based on the knowledge production function for innovative activity, suggests that geographic proximity matters most in...