Population aging results inevitably from increasing longevity and declining fertility. But how much and how fast populations age differ enormously. So do the fiscal stresses that population aging generates.

This paper focuses on three main issues of fundamental health care reform. First, should experience rating--the linkage of premiums to actual loss experience--be retained? Despite widespread support for experience rating among economists, the paper argues that it should be abandoned for reasons...

What are the implications of the current structure of the U.S. health care system for U.S. fiscal stability at the federal and state levels over the medium and long terms? What are the national, global, and inter-generational distribution effects? How will a growing recognition of the need for...

This paper is an exploratory attempt to view the role that social experiments in general, and the income maintenance experiments and work/welfare demonstrations in particular, have played in the policy process through the lens provided by the knowledge ...

Economists should pay more attention to value formation in economic analysis. First, preferences are not stable in any operationally meaningful sense. Any estimated micro behavior that does not take account of the consequences of the behavior on underlying preferences is incapable of serving as...

Several empirical studies have presented evidence that per-person health care spending does not rise with calendar age but with proximity to death. Hence, it is alleged that increases in longevity will not, by themselves, boost health care spending. Unfortunately, available data provide no basis...

The two papers that make up the core of this book address what is perhaps the most fundamental question in the current debate over Social Security: whether to shift, in part or even entirely, from today's pay-as-you-go system to one that is not just funded but also privatized in the sense that...