Abstract This paper applies the analytical tools of optimal taxation theory to the design of the optimal subsidy on preventive behaviours, in an economy where longevity varies across agents, and depends on preventive expenditures and on longevity genes. Public intervention can be here justified...

Under income-differentiated mortality, poverty measures reflect not only the “true” poverty, but, also, the interferences or noise caused by the survival process at work. Such interferences lead to the Mortality Paradox: the worse the survival conditions of the poor are, the lower the...

We explore the optimal fertility timing in a four-period OLG economy with physical capital, whose specificity is to include not one, but two reproduction periods. It is shown that, for a given total fertility rate, the economy exhibits quite different dynamics, depending on the timing of births....

This paper aims at investigating whether or not a utilitarian social planner should subsidize longevity-enhancing expenditures in an economy with a pay-as-you-go pension system. For that purpose, a two-period overlapping-generations model is developed, in which the probability of survival to the...