A classic result in dynamic public economics states that there is no welfare rationale for pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pensions in a dynamically-efficient neoclassical economy with exogenous labor supply. Parenthetically, a welfare justification for PAYG pensions exists if the economy is dynamically...

Notional Defined Contributions (NDC) systems mimic the incentive structureof fully funded social security while preserving the Pay-as-you-go nature ofmost current systems. We study size-preserving social reforms which replacethe current US system with alternative NDCs with many alternative...

Cross-sectional earnings inequality has risen sharply since the late 1970s in the United States. It remains an open question how this development has affected the insurance and income redistribution roles played by Social Security. The paper's first question is: How have the government...

The means-testing of age pension programs allows governments to control the receipt of pension benefits (extensive margin) and the benefit level (intensive margin). We investigate how the presence of the extensive margin influences the trade-off between protecting the poorer elderly and the...

Feldstein (1996, 1974) reported that Social Security in the U.S.A. reduced personal saving (“saving”) in 1992 (1971) by $416 ($61) billion. I reestimate his life-cycle consumption specification using data from the latest NIPA revision, correct his calculations, and find that the implied...

In this paper we develop an algorithm to numerically solve dynamic stochastic overlapping generations economies. In our model agents live for six periods and face idiosyncratic as well as aggregate uncertainty with respect to their labor and capital income. Insurance markets are absent and...

This paper proposes and assesses consistent multi-factor dynamic ane mortality models for longevity risk applications. The dynamics of the model produce closed-form expressions for survival curves. The framework includes an arbitrage free model specication. Importantly, the mortality model...

This study provides a critical assessment of various fiscal policy instruments - including direct public job creation, active labour market and care policies, social protection measures and tax reforms - and their effectiveness in supporting the most vulnerable groups in the labour market....

We provide a complete characterization of intergenerational welfare state with education and pension under probabilistic voting where voters internalize the general equilibrium effects materializing in their life-span. We show that as public education is introduced in the economy through the...

There are substantial cross-country differences in labor supply late in the life cycle (age 50+). A theory of labor supply and retirement decisions is developed to quantitatively assess the role of social security, disability insurance, and taxation for understanding differences in labor supply...