This paper surveys recent theoretical economic research on long term care (LTC). LTC differs from health care: it is about nursing; it is mostly provided by unpaid caregivers (mainly spouses and children), whereas both the market and the State play a modest role. The future of LTC appears to be...

We study the role of social long term care (LTC) insurance when income taxation and private insurance markets are imperfect. Policy instruments include public provision of LTC as well as a subsidy on private insurance. The subsidy scheme may be linear or nonlinear. For the linear part we...

We consider social insurance schemes with a two-part benefit formula: a flat (constant) term and a variable term which is proportional to individuals' contributions. The factor of proportionality defines the type of social insurance. We adopt a two-stage political economy approach. At the first,...

This paper studies the optimal linear pension scheme when society consists of rational and myopic individuals. Myopic individuals have, ex ante, a strong preference for the present even though, ex post, they would regret not to have saved enough. While rational and myopic persons share the same...

This paper shows that the combination of habit formation – present consumption creating additional consumption needs in the future – and myopia may explain why some retirees are forced to "unretire", i.e., unexpectedly return to work. It also shows that when myopia about habit formation...

The 'Canada Dry' pensions system is in some countries one of the frequent routes to early retirement. It constitutes an informal substitute for early retirement programs. Accordingly, firms lay off aged workers they find costly for what they produce and, to get their support, supplement...

This paper studies the design of pension schemes in a society where fertility is endogenous and parents differ in their ability to raise children. In a world with perfect information, a pay-as-you-go social security system is characterized by equal pensions for all but different contributions...

This paper studies the design of retirement and disability policies. It illustrates the often observed exit from the labor force of healthy workers through disability insurance schemes. Two types of individuals, disabled and leisure-prone ones, have the same disutility for labor and cannot be...

This paper studies the design of redistributive policies between and within the member countries of an economic union. There are two types of countries, which differ in their proportion of high income individuals. Both the supra-national and the national governments attempt to redistribute...