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A seminal result Yaari holds that all pension savings should be in life-annuities. Annuities offer a higher return than standard assets and diversify mortality risk and therefore it is individually optimal to save in annuities only. This is a cornerstone result in the pensions literature where many attempts have been made to explain that individual savings in annuities is very low, the socalled annuity puzzle. But is the result that all pension savings should be in life-annuities also socially optimal? We show in a standard setting with fair annuities and dynamic efficiency that full annutization of all pensions saving is not socially optimal. Less than full annutization implies unintentional bequests and thus transfers from the old to the young, which is welfare improving under dynamic efficiency. Further, we show that no annutization can implement the Golden Rule capital stock level and analyse whether some annutization is socially optimal using a numerical analysis, which shows that it is the case under a wide range of parameter constellations.

Outward habit formation affects consumption decisions. Since consumption displays a negative environmental externality, outward habits has as well an (adverse) effect on the environment. This research paper centers around the theoretical linkage between the combination of both externalities (environmental deterioration and outward habits). The objective of this study is to examine the impacts of outward habits on the state of the environment in the context of an overlapping generations economy. In our study, environmental quality is a public good negatively affected by consumption activity and positively affected by maintenance investment. With outward habit formation, the build-up level of average past consumption in the economy at large influences the current utility of an individual consumer. Thus, individuals draw utility not only from their own level of current consumption, but also from its level relative to the average consumption in the economy. How does outward habit influence the state of the environment? We analyze this question using an overlapping generations model with outward habit and environmental quality in the utility function. In steady state equilibrium allocation, we show that whether outward habits are destructive to the environment depends on the degrees of outward habit formation and the size of the economy.

The present paper presents a standard overlapping generations model with external habits formation and environmental quality in the utility function. Our main objective is to study the impact of external habits on capital accumulation and environmental quality on the intertemporal competitive equilibrium. We notice that striving for status leads to environment worsening and capital increasing when the cohort size is large.

The social and economic developments in European countries have put pressure on their national budgets and threaten the sustainability of public policies. The traditional fiscal indicators, specifically, the deficit and the debt, which are still used today as guiding tools, have proved to be insufficient, due to their arbitrary nature and short-term focus. In this paper, we resort to an alternative fiscal indicator, known as ‘generational accounting’, which is able to incorporate the future changes in the demographic structure of the population, and their corresponding impact on public accounts. It is also able to evaluate how current fiscal policy affects, not only, current generations, but also future generations. We apply this methodology to assess the long-term fiscal situation of Portugal, and compare the results with those obtained in 1999. In this context, we also explore additional scenarios, as well as additional indicators, in order to provide some robustness to our findings. Our results show that, if the current fiscal policy is not significantly changed, future generations will face a much heavier fiscal burden than current generations.

We study medical progress within a two-sector economy of overlapping generations subject to endogenous mortality. Individuals demand health care with a view to lowering mortality over their life-cycle. We characterise the individual optimum and the general equilibrium, and study the impact of a major medical innovation leading to an improvement in the effectiveness of health care. We find that general equilibrium effects dampen strongly the increase in health care usage following medical innovation. Moreover, an increase in savings offsets the negative impact on GDP per capita of a decline in the support ratio. Finally, we show that the reallocation of resources between the final goods and health care sector, following the innovation, plays a crucial role in shaping the general equilibrium impact.

This paper investigates the effects of parenting time on macroeconomic outcomes and welfare when parenting choices are determined by own childhood experience and social norms in an overlapping generations framework. Parenting time and material expenditures on children generate children’s human capital. When the share of parenting time is relatively low and parenting and leisure are complements or weak substitutes the model has two steady-state equilibria with different welfare levels. In the high-welfare equilibrium parents have stronger endogenous taste for parenting and spend more time with children and less in paid work. Higher productivity due to the higher human capital more than compensates for the reduction in working hours, leading to a higher output level, in comparison to the low-welfare equilibrium.

International audience; This paper seeks to explain why annuity purchases are postponed to a later age. We consider an overlapping generations model with uncertain lifetime and two types of annuities. It is shown that, if the economy is dynamically inefficient, individuals demand annuities without delay. However, if it is efficient, annuity purchases are postponed. We also show that these results are robust to several extensions.

The rise of early retirement in Europe is typically attributed to the European system of taxes and transfers. A model with an imperfectly competitive labor market allows us to consider also the effects of bargaining power and of matching efficiency on pre-retirement. We find that lower bargaining power of workers and declining matching efficiency have been important determinants of early retirement in France and Germany. These structural changes, combined with early retirement transfers and population aging, are also consistent with the employment and unemployment rates, labor share and seniority premia.

We provide an ex ante welfare, fiscal and general macroeconomic evaluation of the voluntary old-age saving scheme recently introduced in Poland and known as Employee Capital Plans. ECPs provide tax redemptions as well as lump-sum transfers with the objective to foster old-age savings. A reduction in capital income tax revenue and a rise in expenditure need to be compensated for through adjustments in other taxes. We employ an overlapping-generations model (OLG) to gauge the plausible magnitude of macroeconomic and welfare effects and to provide insights into the microfoundations of these adjustments. Our OLG model features voluntary participation and innovates relative to the literature by introducing agents with hand-to-mouth preferences. We find a relatively strong crowding-out of private savings. In our preferred specification, roughly PLN 0.08–0.09 of every PLN 1 allocated to ECPs is actually new savings, the rest being displaced from unincentivised private voluntary savings. The plausible values of effective capital growth in ECPs range between 0.03 and 0.42 of PLN 1. ECPs reduce the welfare of fully rational agents unless a sufficiently large annuity is offered. ECPs provide consumption smoothing and interest income to HTM agents.

Motivated by the recent increase of public debt experienced by many developed countries, we develop an OLG model to provide the fiscal policies needed for any public debt level to be sustainable in steady state and the consequences that such policies produce on saving and fertility in a small open economy. Our main finding is that a reduction of public debt (an event currently publicly debated) needs tax adjustments that eventually will be detrimental for both fertility and saving under a low-interest-rate regime (possibly similar to the current world regime), with opposite transitional effects on fertility and saving. On the contrary, the needed fiscal adjustments will eventually increase saving and fertility under a high-interest-rate regime, with opposite transitional effects on fertility and saving. Besides providing clear-cut policy implications, our analysis offers possible testable implications concerning the pattern of fertility, taxes and public debt observed in many developed economies.

Policy prescriptions for managing natural resource windfalls are based on the permanent income hypothesis: none of the windfall is invested at home and saving in an intergenerational SWF is dictated by smoothing consumption across different generations. Furthermore, with Dutch disease effects the optimal response is to intertemporally smooth the real exchange rate, smooth public and private consumption, and limit sharp fluctuations in the intersectoral allocation of production factors. We show that these prescriptions need to be modified for the following reasons. First, to cope with volatile commodity prices precautionary buffers should be put in a stabilisation fund. Second, with imperfect access to capital markets the windfall must be used to curb capital scarcity, invest domestically and bring consumption forward. Third, with real wage rigidity consumption must also be brought forward to mitigate transient unemployment. Fourth, the real exchange rate has to temporarily appreciate to signal the need to invest in the domestic economy to gradually improve the ability to absorb the extra spending from the windfall. Fifth, with finite lives the timing of handing back the windfall to the private sector matters and consumption and the real exchange rate will be volatile. Finally, with nominal wage rigidity we show that a Taylor rule is a better short-run response to a crash in commodity prices than a nominal exchange rate peg.

We develop a five period overlapping generations model with individuals who differ by ability and with an imperfect labour market (union wage setting) for the individuals of lower ability. The model explains human capital formation, hours worked and unemployment within one coherent framework. Its predictions match the differences in the unemployment rate across 12 OECD countries remarkably well. A Shapley decomposition of these differences reveals an almost equal role for fiscal policy variables and union preferences. As to fiscal policy, differences in unemployment benefits play a much more important role than tax differences. Differences in households’ taste for leisure are unimportant.

This paper studies the impact of migration and workers’ remittances on human capital and economic growth when young individuals face debt constraints to finance education. We consider an overlapping generations model a la de la Croix and Michel (2007). In this no-commitment setting, education is the engine of growth. Individuals may choose to default on their debt and be excluded from the asset market. We show that remittances tend to tighten the borrowing constraints for a given level of interest rate, but may enhance growth at the equilibrium. The model replicates both negative and positive impacts of migration and remittances on economic growth underlined by the empirical literature. We calibrate the model for 30 economies.

International audience; This contribution1 introduces a sectoral supply functions approach of equilibrium dynamics in the context of a simple model of overlapping generations with heterogeneous goods. The class of preferences that is here considered hinges upon an endogenous leisure motive and an elementary savings behaviour, that comes as a simpler alternative to the Diamond tradition in the benchmark contributions about the properties of overlapping generations economies with two industries. The presence of some institution making possible intergenerational transfers is shown to influence both the equilibrium aggregate factors shares and elasticity of substitution along a stationary equilibrium. Both Wealth-to-Capital and Golden Rule steady state equilibria being considered, the economies are categorised, either as Samuelsonian or classical, according to the sign of the transfers between generations at the Golden Rule steady state. The local stability properties of the various types of equilibria are successively investigated, the elasticities of substitution between the two inputs being emphasised to play a key-role for that purpose. Interestingly, the smoothing properties of factors substitution and their respective contribution to the obtention of the local uniqueness property may differ between the Samuelsonian and classical economies.

We evaluate the ability of generational accounting to assess the potential welfare implications of policy reforms. In an intergenerational context policy reforms usually have redistributive, efficiency, and general equilibrium implications. Our analysis shows that when the policy reform implies changes in economic efficiency, generational accounts can be misleading not only about the magnitude of welfare changes, but also about the identity of who wins and who losses. In contrast, the generational accounts correctly identify welfare changes when the policy reform has only a pure intergenerational redistribution component. We illustrate and quantify this issue in the context of widely considered policy reforms (substitution of consumption for labor taxation, and the increase of retirement age) and in a more general context of optimal policy.

In their quest for universal health coverage (UHC), many developing countries use alternative financing strategies including general revenues to expand health coverage to the whole population. Unless a policy adjustment is undertaken, future generations may foot the bill of the UHC. This raises the important policy questions of who bears the burden of UHC and whether the UHC-fiscal stance is sustainable in the long term. These two questions are addressed using an overlapping generations model within a general equilibrium (OLG-CGE) framework applied to Palestine. We assess and compare alternative ways of financing the UHC-ridden deficit (viz. deferred-debt, current and phased-manner finance) and their implications on fiscal sustainability and intergenerational inequalities. The policy instruments examined include direct labour-income tax and indirect consumption taxes as well as health insurance contributions. Results show that in the absence of any policy adjustment, the implementation of UHC would explode the fiscal deficit and debt-GDP ratio. This indicates that the UHC-fiscal stance is rather unsustainable in the long term, thus, calling for a policy adjustment to service the UHC debt. Among the policies we examined, a current rather than deferred-debt finance through consumption taxation emerged to be preferred over other policies in terms of its implications for both fiscal sustainability and intergenerational inequality.

This paper analyzes the link between asset bubbles, endogenous labor and capital. The question is whether endogenous labor, per se, can explain a crowding-in effect of the bubble, i.e. higher levels of capital and labor. With respect to the existing literature, our contribution is twofold. First, we explicitly and theoretically derive the conditions to have a crowding-in effect of the bubble. Second, the utility function we consider allows us to show that this result does not require an arbitrarily high elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption. Our result still holds for a unit value of this elascticity (Cobb-Douglas utility).

We show that standard preferences of altruistic overlapping generations exhibit future bias, which involves preference reversals associated with increasing impatience. This underlies a conflict of interest between successive generations. We explore the implications of this conflict for intergenerational redistribution when there is a sequence of utilitarian governments representing living generations and choosing policies independently over time. We argue that future bias creates incentives to legislate and sustain a pay-as-you-go pension system, which every government views as a self-enforcing commitment mechanism to increase future old-age transfers.

The paper revises the redistributive channels of monetary policy transmission and their impact on income and wealth distributions in a New-Keynesian Overlapping Generations (OLG) model. The model mimics total asset holdings and earnings processes of several types of households across generations, based on their attitude to saving and income group. In this environment, expansionary monetary shocks stimulate capital and debt accumulation to a larger extent for middle-aged individuals, contributing to intergenerational inequality. Heterogeneity of labor income augments this effect, benefitting richer and more productive workers.

We study the importance of considering different energy requirements for physical capital and final good production in an overlapping generations (OLG) resource economy. In contrast to the standard OLG framework, but consistently with the empirical evidence, we assume that the accumulation of physical capital requires more energy than the production of consumption goods. Focusing on exhaustible energy resources, we find that OLG equilibria can exhibit non-classical dynamics: the economy generates complex dynamics where, differing from the response predicted by the standard approach, resource prices may not increase monotonically. This result illustrates that the technological assumptions behind the energy inputs should be taken with caution, in particular on dynamic analyses involving exhaustible energy resources., Chaire Developpement Durable (Ecole Polytechnique - EDF); Labex MME-DII

This article aims at studying a general equilibrium model with overlapping generations that incorporates inherited tastes (aspirations) and endogenous longevity. The existence of standard-of-living aspirations transmitted between two subsequent generations in a context where the individual state of health depends on public investments in health has some remarkable consequences at the macroeconomic level. First, aspirations allow escaping from the well-known poverty trap scenario described by Chakraborty (2004). Second, the steady-state equilibrium may be destabilized through a super-critical Neimark–Sacker bifurcation when the health tax rate is set at too high or too low a level. This causes endogenous fluctuations in income and longevity.

International audience; This article examines how pollution and its health effects during childhood can affect the dynamics of inequalities among households. In a model in which children’s health is endogenously determined by pollution and the health investments of parents, we show that the economy may exhibit inequality in the long run and be stuck in an inequality trap with steadily increasing disparities, because of pollution. We investigate if an environmental policy, consisting in taxing the polluting production to fund pollution abatement, can address this issue. We find that it can decrease inequality in the long run and enable to escape from the trap if the emission intensity is not too high and if initial disparities are not too wide. Otherwise, we reveal that a policy mix with an additional subsidy to health expenditure may be a better option, at least if parental investment on children’s health is sufficiently efficient.

We revisit the Tragedy of the Commons in an dynamic overlapping generations economy peopled of shepherds who decide how many sheep they let graze on a common parcel of land, while relying on di fferent forms of rationality (Nash players, Pure or Impure Kantian players). We examine the dynamics of heterogeneity and land congestion when the prevalance of those di fferent forms of rationality evolves over time follow- ing a vertical/oblique socialization process a la Bisin and Verdier (2001). We study the impacts of a quota and of a tax on the congestion of land, and we show that introducing a quota may, in some cases, reduce the proportion of Kantians (Pure and Impure), and worsen the Tragedy of Commons with respect to the laissez-faire. Finally, we examine whether a government should promote either a Pure or an Impure Kantian morality, by comparing the relative fi tness of Pure/Impure Kantians, and their interactions with the congestion of land.

We consider an OLG model (of a socialization process) where continuous traits are transmitted from an adult generation to the children. A weighted social network describes how children are influenced not only by their parents but also by other role models within the society. Parents can invest into the purposeful socialization of their children by strategically displaying a cultural trait (which need not coincide with their true trait). Based on Nash equilibrium behavior, we study the dynamics of cultural traits throughout generations. We provide conditions on the network structure that are sufficient for long–run convergence to a society with homogeneous subgroups. In the special case of quadratic utility, the condition is that each child is more intensely shaped by its parents than by the social environment. Our model also represents an extension of the classical DeGroot model of opinion formation for which we introduce strategic interaction in choice of expressed opinions (in our setup: traits). We show that under strategic interaction convergence is slower and for convergence we need more restrictive necessary and sufficient conditions than in the DeGroot model.

This paper investigates the intergenerational welfare impact of raising administered retail energy prices in Saudi Arabia, an example of an oil-exporting country with a fast growing population. To achieve this, we develop a dynamic model with overlapping generations (called MEGIR-SA), which we believe is the first empirical application of its type to be developed for an oil-exporting country. The model is used to analyze the effects of the increase in some Saudi administered energy prices implemented at the end of December 2015. In particular, the model analyzes how these price increases might affect the welfare of Saudis through a direct increase in energy expenditures, an indirect rise in Saudi public income stemming from a lower domestic demand for oil that fosters oil exports at a given level of domestic oil production, and a direct increase of the turnover of the energy sector. The two latter effects can be redistributed by the Saudi public authorities to private agents through higher current public spending and/or public investment. The analysis suggests that the increase in end-user energy prices results in a net overall favorable effect on the intertemporal welfare of all households. This mirrors the impact on the income of private agents of the surplus in public oil income associated with lower domestic consumption of oil products and recycled to private agents. Moreover, it is shown that the additional oil income associated with the increase in domestic energy prices tends to be relatively more beneficial to future generations if it is recycled through public investment. This is reinforced if the future price of oil remains relatively low. In a possible future situation of declining oil prices and domestic production, a policy that would help meet the Saudi Arabian objectives may consist of gradually increasing the fraction of the additional oil income that is recycled through public capital spending.

First generation immigrants to the United States have higher fertility rates than natives. This paper analyzes to what extent this factor provides political support for immigration, using an overlapping generation model with production and capital accumulation. In this setting, immigration represents a dynamic trade-off for native workers as more immigrants decrease current wages but increase the future return on their savings. We find that immigrant fertility has surprisingly strong effects on voter incentives, especially when there is persistence in the political process. If fertility rates are sufficiently high, native workers support immigration. Persistence, either due to inertia induced by frictions in the legal system or through expectational linkages, significantly magnifies the effects. Entry of immigrants with high fertility has redistributive impacts across generations similar to pay-as-you-go social security: initial generations are net winners, whereas later generations are net losers.