We seek to explain why countries have adopted national Old-Age Insurance and Health Insurance programs. Theoretical work has posited several factors that could lead to this adoption: the strain from expanding capitalism; the need for political legitimacy; the desire to transfer to similar people;...

I examine the effect of Old-Age Insurance (OAI) on older women’s labour-force participation in fourteen countries since around 1930. Older women’s participation has risen in the US, but has fallen over time in some European countries. The discontinuity of incentives at the state pension age...

This paper uses numerical methods to compare optimal portfolios in tax-deferred and Roth-type savings accounts. Income and payroll taxes affect optimal portfolios in tax-deferred and Roth-type plans differently. For workers with assets in only one type of plan, the optimal equity share in a...

To avoid exploding government debt, numerical macro models require ‘fiscal reaction rules’. Present rules impose arbitrary, backward-looking reaction of taxes to deviations of the debt ratio from a target. Arbitrary models may be poor guides to monetary policy. An optimising fiscal...

I examine the effect of Old-Age Insurance systems on the labour supply of older men. Male retirement ages are crucial to the solvency of OAI systems. Historical data on participation rates and OAI rules in thirteen developed countries show rapid falls in participation among men aged 60-4 after...

Data on credit ratings by the agencies with the legal status of Nationally-Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (NRSROs) show some tendency for one-day downgrades that start from the lowest investment grade, BBB-, to travel more grades than those from neighboring grades. This would be...