After the fall in fertility during the Demographic Transition, many developed countries experienced a baby bust, followed by the Baby Boom and subsequently a return to low fertility. Received wisdom from the Demography literature links these large fluctuations in fertility to the series of...

Based partially on the belief that innovation is not possible under perfect competition, a huge number of papers have been written about the nature of innovation under monopoly or oligopoly. In fact, competitive rents can and do sustain innovation in the complete absence of monopoly power....

We model pay-as-you-go (PAYG) social security systems as the outcome of majority voting within a standard OLG model with production and an exogenous population growth rate. At each point in time individuals work, save, consume and invest by taking the social security policy as given. The latter...

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...

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...