We characterize Markov-perfect equilibria in a setting where the absence of government commitment affects the financing of productive public capital. We show that at any date, a government in office only considers intertemporal distortions over two consecutive periods in choosing taxes. We then...

I compare the welfare implications of implementing Bismarckian and Beveridgean social security systems. In an overlapping generations environment with intragenerational homogeneity, agents can be better off with a system with universal benefits than with a comparable system with...

This paper presents a new rationale for imposing restrictions on child labor. In a standard overlapping generations model where parental altruism results in transfers that children allocate to consumption and education, the Nash-Cournot equilibrium results in sub-optimal levels of parental...

This paper investigates the impact of borrowing constraints on welfare in a standard overlapping-generations model where parental altruism results in transfers. I find that the average level of welfare is higher when children cannot borrow against future income. As Bernheim (1989) showed, the...

The primary objective of this paper is to highlight the distinct roles of altruism and of self-interest in the political determination of a public education policy. I assess the relative importance of three factors in the determination of the equilibrium level of this policy: altruism, the...