In this paper we examine the sustainability of euro area public finances against thebackdrop of population ageing. We critically assess the widely used projections of theWorking Group on Ageing Populations (AWG) of the EU's Economic PolicyCommittee and argue that ageing costs may be higher than...

In an overlapping generations-experiment with multiple families participants caneither support their parents directly and thereby reduce their tax burden or hopefor tax-financed old age support. State productivity is captured by the factor withwhich total tax revenues are multiplied to determine...

Dieser Beitrag enthält drei Kurzartikel. Der erste behandelt die Wirtschaftspolitik, derzweite die Soziale Sicherung. Der dritte skizziert den Ansatz der Ökonomischen Ethik,ein Forschungsprogramm, das in jüngster Zeit auch unter der Bezeichnung„Ordonomik“ vorangetrieben wird. Eingerahmt...

The rational prodigality argument, which often serves to justify social security,is considered in a second-best tax framework with endogenous labor supply. Rationalprodigality renders the familiar policies time inconsistent. We analyze time consistentpolicies and show that a wage tax suffices to...

We reconsider pay-as-you-go pensions (PAYG) policy in a version of the Diamond(1965) overlapping generations model with an imperfectly competitive financialsector and with a low rate of tax on its profits. PAYG then has two effects on capital:the well-known negative crowding-out effect in...

Die Debatte über die optimale Ausgestaltung der Alterssicherung wird in jüngster Zeit äußerst kontrovers und hitzig geführt. Dabei scheint uns ein zentraler Aspekt nicht genügend beachte zu werden: Welcher Zusammenhang besteht zwischen den Merkmalen des Finanzsystems und des...

Since the beginning of the 1990s, it has been widely expected that the implementation of the European Single Market would lead to a rapid convergence of Europe’s financial systems. In the present paper we will show that at least in the period prior to the introduction of the common currency...

We study the effects of demographic shocks and changes in the pension system on themacroeconomic performance of an advanced small open economy. An overlappinggenerationsmodel is constructed which includes a realistic description of the mortalityprocess. Individual agents choose their optimal...

Reforming pensions looms large over the policy agenda of OECD countries. This is hardlysurprising since public spending on pensions accounted on average for 7 per cent of OECDGDP in 2005; and this pension spending effort is set to increase significantly over the comingdecades in response to...

Pay-as-you-go pension programs can help to share risk amongst generations.While a wage-indexed pension program is best suited to share labor income risk,I show that the combination of stochastic labor income and stochastic populationgrowth may reduce the possibilities for intergenerational risk...