This paper explores whether habit formation in the representative agent’s preferences can explain two failures of the standard permanent income model: the sensitivity to lagged consumer sentiment, and to predictable changes in income. I show that in a habit formation model, the sensitivity of...

This paper describes the model MARS, which is the shared property of the DP and the DSS. Currently, MARS aims at planning the general evolution of the first pillar pension scheme for private sector wage-earners, based on macroeconomic and demographic data. It allows to evaluate the impact of...

Keeping public finances on a sustainable foundation while the population ages is clearly a problem in Finland, as in many other western countries. The shrinking of the working-age population, ageing of the labour force, and growth in the number of very old persons form a difficult combination...

We examine the role of changing mortality in explaining the rise of retirement over the course of the 20th century. We construct a model in which individuals make labor/leisure choices over their lifetimes subject to uncertainty about their date of death. In an environment in which mortality is...

This paper examines the relationship between fertility and human capital investment, and it’s implications for economic growth, focusing on the e ects of declining mortality. Unlike the existing literature, this paper stresses the role of uncertainty about the number of surviving children. If...

This chapter examines the process of development from an epoch of Malthusian stagnation to a state of sustained economic growth. The analysis focuses on recently advanced unified growth theories that capture the intricate evolution of income per capita, technology, and population over the course...

This paper analyzes qualitatively and quantitatively the e ects of declining mortality rates on fertility, education and economic growth. The analysis demonstrates that if individuals are prudent in the face of uncertainty about child survival, a decline in an exogenous mortality rate reduces...

This chapter examines the process of development from an epoch of Malthusian stagnation to a state of sustained economic growth. The analysis focuses on recently advanced unified growth theories that capture the intricate evolution of income per capita, technology, and population over the entire...

The demographic transition that swept the world in the course of the last century has been identified as one of the prime forces in the transition from stagnation to growth. The unprecedented increase in population growth during the early stages of industrialization was ultimately reversed and...

In this paper we consider an overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility and two-sided altruism and show the limitations of applying commonly used open loop Nash equilibrium in characterizing equilibrium transfers from parents to children in the form of bequest, and transfers from...