In this paper we develop a new methodology for finding optimal government policies in economies with heterogeneous agents. The methodology is solely based on three classes of equilibrium conditions from the government's and individual agent's optimization problems: 1) the first order conditions;...

The selfish life-cycle model or hypothesis is, together with the dynasty or altruism model, the most widely used theoretical model of household behavior in economics, but does this model apply in the case of a country like Japan, which is said to have closer family ties than other countries? In...

Recently Cherchye et al. (2007a) provided a nonparametric characterization of a general collective model for household consumption which includes externalities and public consumption. This characterization involved different testable necessary and sufficient conditions. We discuss the special...

Das Konzept einer redistributiven Sozialpolitik scheint schon seit längerem in Deutschland an seine Grenzen gestoßen zu sein: Die durchgehend mit einer erheblichen Umverteilungskomponente versehenen sozialen Sicherungssysteme haben einerseits zu unerträglichen Belastungen insbesondere der...