In the presence of endogenous growth intergenerational transfer from the young to the old reduce per capita income growth and harm future generations. On the other hand, competitive equilibria are inefficient if externalities sustain long-run growth. This paper shows that if individuals retire...

Several recent studies have examined the steady-state welfare implications of mortality differentials within unfunded Social Security systems, concluding that these differentials undermine the progressivity of the system and make society worse-off relative to alternative public pension schemes....

We consider a small open economy in which the level of public education funding is determined by popular vote. We show that growth can be enhanced by the introduction of pay-as-you-go pensions even if the growth rate of aggregate wages falls short of the interest rate. The reason is that the...

We examine the impact of a stylized pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) Social Security program in an economy of overlapping generations with equilibrium growth. We adopt realistic mortality and other demographic assumptions and allow for the presence or absence of full life annuities. In all cases we find...

This paper analyzes the transition from a pay-as-you-go to a fully funded pension system within the framework of endogenous growth in the presence of uncertainty. Gyárfás and Marquardt (2001) prove the possibility of a Pareto improving conversion in a certain world. Two distinct kinds of...

Current Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidelines use the interest rate as a basis for the discount rate, and have nothing to say about an intergenerationally fair discount rate. We derive this discount rate by differentiating a social welfare function with respect to perturbations in...

The paper develops an overlapping generations model that highlights interactions between social security, unemployment and growth. The social security system has two components: old age pensions and unemployment insurance. Pensions have a direct effect on economic growth. Both pensions and...

This paper examines the growth effects of an increase of capital income taxes with additional revenue being devoted to cut wage-related social security contributions to reduce unemployment. The analysis is carried out in an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth, unemployment and a...

We incorporate Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses (KUJ) preferences into the Blanchard-Yaari (BY) framework and develop, using an AK technology, a model of balanced growth. In this context we investigate status preference, demographic, and pension policy shocks. We find that a higher degree of KUJ...