This paper presents a set of generational accounts (GAS) that can be used to assess the fiscal burden current generations are placing on future generations. The GAS indicate the net present value amount that current and future generations are projected to pay to the government now and in the...

This paper focuses on U.S. saving, demographics, and fiscal policy. We use data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys of the 1980s to consider the effect of demographic change on past and future U.S. saving rates. Our findings indicate that demographic change may significantly alter the U.S....

Notwithstanding its widespread use as a measure of fiscal policy, the government deficit is not a well-defined concept from the perspective of neoclassical macro economics. From the neoclassical perspective the deficit is an arbitrary accounting construct whose value depends on how the...

Fiscal sustainability is one of the most pressing policy issues of our time. Yet it remains difficult to quantify. Official debt is plagued with a number of measurement difficulties since its measurement reflects the choice of words, not policies. And forming the fiscal gap-the imbalance in the...