This paper uses a heterogeneous-agent overlapping-generations model to examine the fiscal and distributional consequences of introducing a means test in US Social Security. I find that a means test, that is, conditioning benefit payments on a household's earnings or assets, leads to a higher...

The partial privatization of the US Social Security system was clearly the top economic policy priority for the new Bush administration. While many famous economists, publicists and politicians support, others reject the partial privatization of the Social Security system. The international...

Modern macroeconomics empirically addresses economy-wide incentives behind economic actions by using insights from the way a single representative household would behave. This analytical approach requires that incentives of the poor and the rich are strictly aligned. In empirical analysis a...

In an overlapping generations maximization framework with consumers, whose information on uncertain future income realizations is front loaded, a closed form aggregate consumption function with CRRA preferences is derived. To have a closed form solution we assume that consumers solve their...

Various deviations from the Permanent Income consumption model with rational expectations have been discussed in the literature, including loss aversion and liquidity constraints. In the existing literature, these two types of consumption asymmetry are usually considered as mutually exclusive....

This paper summarizes the proceedings of the second Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice conference, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on July 2527, 2006. These conferences are unique in featuring the collaboration of two groups of payments experts the private-sector payments industry...

This paper summarizes the proceedings of the second Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice conference, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on July 2527, 2006. These conferences are unique in featuring the collaboration of two groups of payments experts the private-sector payments industry...

Various deviations from the Permanent Income consumption model with rational expectations have been discussed in the literature, including loss aversion and liquidity constraints. In the existing literature, these two types of consumption asymmetry are usually considered as mutually exclusive....

Various deviations from the Permanent Income consumption model with rational expectations have been discussed in the literature, including loss aversion and liquidity constraints. In the existing literature, these two types of consumption asymmetry are usually considered as mutually exclusive....