The data show that an increase in government provided old-age pensions is strongly correlated with a reduction in fertility. What type of model is consistent with this finding? We explore this question using two models of fertility: one by Barro and Becker (1989), and one inspired by Caldwell...

Intellectual property (IP) protection involves a trade-off between the undesirability of monopoly and the desirable encouragement of creation and innovation. Optimal policy depends on the relative strength of these two forces. We give a quantitative assessment of current IP policies. We focus...

We describe the historical evolution of the Spanish Social Security system and its current organization. Our attention concentrates on the main public pension scheme for private employees in the manufacturing and service sector (RGSS) which covers by far the largest majority of Spanish workers....

We examine the effects of changes of government provided old age pensions on fertility choices in the context of two models of fertility, the one by Barro and Becker (1989), and the one inpired by Caldwell and developed by Boldrin and Jones (2002). In the Barro and Becker model parents have...

We model PAYG social security systems as the outcome of majority voting within a OLG model with production. When voting, individuals make two choices: pay the elderly their pensions or default. which amount to promise themselves next period. Under general circumstances, there exist equilibria...

We develop a model of fertility choice by utility maximizing households, based on an explicit notion of intergenerational external effects. In contrast to previous economic literature, we assume that the external effects run from children to parents. This gives rise to a fundamentally different...