We construct a database of public pension policy changes with motivation and implementation information for ten OECD countries. Structural pension reforms, motivated by long-run sustainability concerns, often come with prolonged phase-in periods. In response to pension retrenchments implemented...

We show that capital controls have large adverse effects on misallocation, exports and welfare using a dynamic Melitz-OLG model with heterogeneous firms, monopolistic competition, endogenous trade participation and collateral constraints. Static effects increase misallocation by reducing...

Social Security trust fund portfolio diversification to include some equities reduces the equity premium by raising the safe real interest rate. This requires changes in taxes. Under the hypothesis of constant marginal returns to risky investments, trust fund diversification lowers the price of...

This paper analyzes consumption to evaluate the distributional effects of pension reforms. Using Swedish administrative data, we show that on average workers who retire earlier consume less while retired and experience larger drops in consumption around retirement. Interpreted via a theoretical...

The outreach of macroprudential policies is likely limited in practice by imperfect regulation enforcement, whether due to shadow banking, regulatory arbitrage, or other regulation circumvention schemes. We study how such concerns affect the design of optimal regulatory policy in a workhorse...

This paper studies how gradualism affects the welfare gains from trade, technology, and reforms. When people face adjustment frictions, gradual shocks create less adverse distributional effects in the short run. We show that there are welfare gains from inducing a more gradual transition via...

The post-COVID price surge has reignited interest in inflation's impact on American households. Even if anticipated and with full market adjustments, inflation affects households through its interaction with the fiscal system, which is the focus of this paper. Inflation affects households...

The entitlement to social security retirement benefits is a major component of aggregate household wealth. This paper focuses on the impact of social security annuities on household portfolio allocation, extending existing optimizing models of portfolio allocation to explicitly consider the role...

We examine the connection between taxes paid and benefits accrued under the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program on both the intensive and extensive margins. We perform these calculations for stylized workers given the existing benefit structure and disability hazard rates. On the...

This paper examines how labor income volatility and social security benefits can influence lifecycle household portfolios. We examine how much the individual optimally saves and where, taking into account liquid financial wealth and annuities, and stocks as well as bonds. Higher labor income...