This paper examines the question of why the composition of government expenditure differs among democratic countries and to what extent it may be explained by differences in economic conditions or preferences. A simple overlapping generations model, which allows for a range of relevant factors,...

We study the impact of a government spending shock on the distribution of income and wealth between cohorts in a dynamic stochastic Overlapping Generations model with two types of households, Ricardian households and rule-of-thumb consumers. We demonstrate that an unexpected increase in...