To study the role of home production in life¿cycle behavior, this paper creates a theoretical model in which both spouses in a couple allocate their time between market and home work. It then derives a pair of regression equations for estimating the parameters of the model, and it carries out...

Economists have long thought of technological progress as a primary determinant of rising living standards over time. One might think of technological progress as increasing the "effectiveness" of labor, thereby raising the amount of output that each unit of labor can produce. The purpose of...

Economists' principal tool for studying household behavioral responses to changes in tax and other government policies, and the magnitude and determinants of private saving, is the life-cycle model. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to incorporate into that model one of the most...

This study seeks to quantify determinants, and costs, of the labor-force participation of married women. We use demographic and earnings data from the Health and Retirement Study. The earnings data constitute an unusually long panel but have the defect of lacking corresponding reports on work...

Economists’ standard model assumes that improvements in total factor productivity (TFP) raise the marginal product of labor for all workers evenly. This paper uses an earnings dynamics regression model to study whether, in practice, older workers benefit less from TFP growth than younger...

This paper develops a new measure of after-tax rate of return on aggregate wealth and uses it in estimating the structural relationship between the long-run interest rate and productivity growth rate. The structural approach allows use of parameter estimates in constructing projections for the...

Long-term interest rates have been falling globally since the early 1980s and have reached historically low levels. Past forecasts largely missed this secular decline. This paper reviews methodologies for making long-term interest rate projections. We synthesize results from studies that use...

We analyze lifetime earnings histories of white males during 1960-2010 and categorize the labor force status of every worker as either working full-time, partially retired or fully retired. We find that the fraction of partially retired workers has risen dramatically (from virtually zero to 15...

Many economic analyses of public policy issues are based upon the life-cycle model of household behavior. The usual formulation omits private intergenerational transfers. This paper considers the possibility of a more sophisticated formulation that includes the latter. We examine 1992-2008 HRS...

A basic difference between a pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) public pension system and one with fully funded private accounts lies in the startup. From its inception, a PAYGO system can pass contributions from current workers to current retirees. A funded system must either spend decades accumulating tax...