This paper assesses how a permanent shift from financing a public pay-as-you-go pension by direct (labour income) taxation towards financing it by indirect(consumption) taxation affects the economy and welfare. To this end, we use anoverlapping-generations-augmented two-region general...

This paper uses SOEP data to study the distributional effect of intergenerational transfers on the wealth distribution of German households. Similar to most other central European countries, Germany is likely to face a period of increasing aggregate bequest flows. At the same time, there is an...

Homeownership rates differ widely across European countries. We document that part of this variation is driven by differences in the fraction of adults co-residing with their parents. Comparing Germany and Italy, we show that in contrast to homeownership rates per household, homeownership rates...

We analyze the long-run growth effects of automation in the canonical overlapping generations framework. While automation implies constant returns to capital within this model class (even in the absence of technological progress), we show that it does not have the potential to lead to positive...

This paper presents long term projections of the German pension system that are based on a general equilibrium model with overlapping generations (OLG). This framework takes into account the two way feedback of both micro and macroeconomic relationships, meaning that households, for example,...

The currently observed demographic change consists of two independent develop-ments that differ in structure and persistence: (1) A slow, monotonic and (presum-ably) permanent ageing effect caused by an increasing life expectancy; (2) a morerapidly changing, non-monotonic and less permanent...

We construct a simple exchange economy overlapping generations model in which there are along with a public social security various private insurance schemes to explore fertility and the effects of various variables on it. In the private system parents can invest in children and benefit from...

Japan's economy is expanding and expected to continue expanding moderately, according to Monthly Report of Recent Economic and Financial Developments released by the Bank of Japan in July 2007.The BOJ declared the change of policy stance at the Monetary Policy Meeting held on July 14, 2006. The...

I calculate unemployment multipliers of fiscal consolidation policies in a standard, closed-economy New Keynesian framework with search and matching frictions, and, as an innovation, in the presence of sectoral heterogeneity. Family and non-family firms behave differently in the labor market and...

We discuss how cross-country unemployment insurance can be used to improve international risk sharing. We use a two-country business cycle model with incomplete financial markets and frictional labor markets where the unemployment insurance scheme operates across both countries. Cross-country...