In this article we formulate and solve the optimal design problem of a defined contribution public pension fund, in a highly stylized but still rather general non-stationary framework. We adopt the viewpoint of a benevolent social planner who aims at treating in a fair manner the successive...

Software can be distributed closed source (proprietary) or open source (developed collaboratively). While a firm cannot sell open source software, and so loses potential sales revenue, the open source software development process can have a substantial positive impact on the quality of a...

Existing models of R&D are not easily reconciled with four observable aspects of R&D: initial technologies (ideas) need to be developed further, only a minority of initial ideas are successfully brought to the market, production and process innovations take place simultaneously (whereby,...

This paper investigates the use of pricing schemes in subscription services that consist of various combinations of activation, subscription, and cancellation fees. When customers exclusively consider what is directly perceivable, the activation fee starts low and increases as the network grows...

An implicit partial differential equation (PDE) method is used to determine the cost of hedging for a Guaranteed Lifelong Withdrawal Benefit (GLWB) variable annuity contract. In the basic setting, the underlying risky asset is assumed to evolve according to geometric Brownian motion, but this is...

Optimal control of dynamic econometric models has a wide variety of applications including economic policy relevant issues. There are several algorithms extending the basic case of a linear-quadratic optimization and taking nonlinearity and stochastics into account, but being still limited in a...

The intrinsic comparative dynamics of a ubiquitous class of optimal control problems with a time-varying discount rate and time-distance discounting are derived and shown to be characterized by a positive semidefinite matrix. It is also shown that the said comparative dynamics are invariant to...

Since the end of the seventies Skiba points have been studied in infinite time optimal control problems with multiple steady states. At such a Skiba point the decision maker is indifferent between choosing trajectories that approach different steady states. This paper extends this theory towards...

There is a growing concern that risks of disease outbreak and pandemics are increasing over time. We consider optimal investments in prevention before an outbreak using an endogenous risk approach within an optimal control setting. Using the threat of pandemic influenza as an illustrative...

The recent financial crisis poses the challenge to understand how systemic risk arises endogenously and what architecture can make the financial system more resilient to global crises. This paper shows that a financial network can be most resilient for intermediate levels of risk...