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Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10000054071
We examine the link between equity risk premiums and demographic changes using a very long sample over the twentieth century for the US, Japan, UK, Germany and France, and a shorter sample covering the last third of the twentieth century for fifteen countries. We find that demographic variables...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012469021
Even with well-developed capital markets, there is no private market mechanism for trading between current and future generations, so a potential role for public old-age pension systems is to spread economic and demographic shocks among different generations. This paper evaluates the smoothing...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012459525
This paper studies the business-cycle variation in higher-order (labor) income risk--that is, risks that are captured by moments higher than the variance. We examine the extent to which such risks can be smoothed within households or with government social insurance and tax policies. We use...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012453147
Many government social insurance policies have low take-up. To understand whether this is due to administrative barriers, information, or low valuation of the insurance, we study an unusual policy experiment in Thailand that offered a very large lump-sum incentive for informal workers in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10015145047
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Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003476780
In an influential paper, Baily (1978) showed that the optimal level of unemployment insurance (UI) in a stylized static model depends on only three parameters: risk aversion, the consumption-smoothing benefit of UI, and the elasticity of unemployment durations with respect to the benefit rate....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012467297
This paper begins by discussing the nature of and rationale for social insurance programs. I then consider three political principles and four economic principles that could guide the design and reform of social insurance programs. These ideas are then applied to unemployment insurance, Social...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012467435
We study optimal tax policy in a dynamic private information economy with endogenous private markets. We characterize efficient allocations and competitive equilibria. A standard assumption in the literature is that trades are observable by all agents. We show that in such an environment the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012467500