For an overlapping generations economy with varying life-cycle productivity, non-stationary endowments, continuous time starting at _∞ (hence allowing for full anticipation), constant-returns-to-scale production and CES utility we fully characterise equilibria where output is higher than...

The main result is that the golden rule equilibrium (GRE) is Pareto optimal (in the classical sense) in an overlapping generations (OG) model with constant-returns-to-scale production, transfers, arbitrary life-time productivity and CES instantaneous felicity. In addition, we extend Cass and...

In an exogenous-growth economy with overlapping generations (OG) we analyse local stability of the balanced growth equilibria with respect to perturbations of consumption endowments, thought of as the "monetised" value of a government policy to individuals. We show that perturbed economies have...

For two independent principles of intergenerational equity, the implied discount rate equals the growth rate of real per-capita income, say 2%, thus falling right into the range suggested by the U.S. Offce of Management and Budget. To prove this, we develop a simple tool to evaluate small policy...

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...

Rational expectations do not require beliefs to be consistent with history and with what agents can conclude from it. Actually, at a rational expectations equilibrium agents may hold beliefs that explain poorly the history they observe, even when restricted to only those rationalizing their...

We consider in this paper overlapping generations economies with pollution resulting from both consumption and production. The competitive equilibrium steady state is compared to the optimal steady state from the social planner's viewpoint. We show that the dynamical inefficiency of competitive...

For a given technology, two ways are available to achieve low polluting emissions: reducing production per capita or reducing population size. This paper insists on the tension between the former and the latter. Controlling pollution either through Pigovian taxes or through tradable quotas...

We explore the optimal fertility age-pattern in a four-period OLG economy with physical capital accumulation. For that purpose, we firstly compare the dynamics of two closed economies, Early and Late Islands, which differ only in the timing of births. On Early Island, children are born from...

Both environmental quality and health care expenditure are determinants of health and life expectancy, but the support for them appears to be different according to the electors' age, with a relatively larger support for health expenditure among the elderly as it is generally effective on a...