A vast empirical evidence in experimental psychology on time discounting has documented various behavioral anomalies which cast doubts on the empirical support for exponential discounting, to date the most widely used assumption on time preference in economic theory. The most important of such...

We examine the possibility of a Pareto-improving pay-as-you-go social security system, using an ex-ante welfare criterion. Our objective is to identify the conditions under which a suitably designed pay-as-you-go social security system is welfare improving, when markets are complete and...

We consider an economy where individuals face uninsurable risks to their human capital accumulation, and study the problem of determining the optimal level of linear taxes on capital and labor income together with the optimal path of the debt level. We show both analytically and numerically that...

When individuals' labor and capital income are subject to uninsurable idiosyncratic risks, should capital and labor be taxed, and if so how? In a two period general equilibrium model with production, we derive a decomposition formula of the welfare e ects of these taxes into insurance and...