A large literature has studied the effects of PAYG systems on fertility, human capital and growth. We argue that the social security system may also interact with longevity when the latter is endogenously determined. We show that in such an environment, in a dynamically efficient economy PAYG...

Early retirement represents a policy response to the appearance of a mass of redundant middle-aged workers, who were not entitled to a pension transfer in their old age. This policy is distortionary, since it reduces the incentive to accumulate human capital, hence decreasing economic growth: it...

The aim of this paper is to provide a political-economic explanation of the wide spread adoption of generous early retirement. We suggest that the political support for generous early retirement provisions relies on: (i) the existence of an initial, significant group of redundant elderly workers...

We provide a long-term perspective on the individual retirement behaviour and on the future of early retirement. In a cross-country sample, we find that total pension spending depends positively on the degree of early retirement and on the share of elderly in the population, which increase the...

In this paper I will analyse the redistribution of income amongst n generations using the Single-mindedness Theory. I will introduce a new expression for the balanced-budget constraint, no longer based on lump- sum transfers as in the traditional literature, but rather on more realistic labour...

Generous early retirement provisions account for a large proportion of the drop in the labour force participation of elderly workers. The aim of this paper is to provide a political-economic explanation of the wide spread adoption of early retirement. We suggest that the political support for...

Generous early retirement provisions account for a large proportion of the drop in the labor force participation of elderly workers. The aim of this paper is to provide a positive theory of early retirement. We suggest that the political support for generous early retirement provisions relies...

Bismarckian social security systems are associated with larger public pension expenditures, a smaller fraction of private pension and lower income inequality than Beveridgean systems. This paper introduces a bidimensional voting model to account for all these features. Agents differ in age,...

Why does the largest US welfare programme select its recipients by their age, rather than by their earnings or wealth? In a dynamic efficient overlapping generation economy with earnings heterogeneity, we analyze a welfare system composed of a within-cohort redistribution scheme and an unfunded...

This paper argues that social security enjoys wider political support than other welfare programs because: (i) retirees constitute the most homogeneous voting group, and (ii) the intragenerational redistribution component of social security induces low-income young to support this system.