Japan is in the midst of a demographic transition that is both rapid and large by international standards. As recently as 1990, Japan had the youngest population among the Group of 6 large, developed countries. However, the combined effects of aging of the baby boomer generation and low...

The last two decades have witnessed the complete or parital privatization of public pension systems in several countries, and many proposals have been made to privatize the U.S. Social Security system either completely or partially. The motivation behind such proposals is that privatization will...

This paper quantifies the role of alternative shocks in accounting for the recent declines in the Japanese saving rate and provides some projections about its future course. We consider three distinct sources of variation in the saving rate: changes in fertility rates, changes in survival rates,...

This paper provides a quantitative analysis of the economic effects of public debt in a pure life-cycle economy. The effects on observable quantities are invariably small in cases where the change in the debt is accompanied by a change in lump-sum taxes and transfers. This is true of both the...

The doctrine of comparable worth rests on an assumption that each job possesses an inherent worth independent of the market forces of supply and demand. Implementation of comparable worth further requires that inherent job worth be measured with reasonable accuracy. This paper reports the...

This paper quantifies the role of alternative shocks in accounting for the recent declines in Japanese saving rates and interest rates and provides some projections about their future course. We consider three distinct sources of variation in saving rates and real interest rates: changes in...