1,561 research outputs found
Growth and the Ageing Joneses
Get PDFWe incorporate Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses (KUJ) preferences into the Blanchard-Yaari (BY) framework and develop, using an AK technology, a model of balanced growth. In this context we investigate status preference, demographic, and pension policy shocks. We find that a higher degree of KUJ lowers economic growth, while, in contrast, a decrease in the fertility and mortality rates increase it. In the second part of the paper we extend the model by incorporating a Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension system with a statutory retirement date. This introduces a life-cycle in human wealth earnings and implies that the growth rate is higher under PAYG. We also consider the implications of an increase in the retirement date under both defined benefit and defined contribution schemes.Relative consumption, OLG, Endogenous growth, Pension reform
Labor Tax Reform and Equilibrium Unemployment: A Search and Matching Approach
Get PDFThe paper studies simple strategies of labor tax reform in a search and matching model of the labor market featuring endogenous labor supply.Changing the composition of the tax wedge|that is, reducing a payroll tax and increasing a progressive wage tax such that the marginal tax wedge remains unaffected|increases employment, reduces the equilibrium unemployment rate, and increases public revenue as long as workers do not have all the bargaining power in wage negotiations.A strategy of replacing employment taxes by payroll taxes increases employment and reduces the equilibrium unemployment rate, while the effect on public revenue is ambiguous.labour market;taxation;unemployment;matching
Profile of author B.J. Morrison of Bar Harbor, plus a review of her most recent
No full textProfile of author B.J. Morrison of Bar Harbor, plus a review of her most recent novel, The Martini Effect
Public Investment in a Small Open Economy
Get PDFWe study the effects of public investment in a dynamic overlapping-generations model of a small open economy. Boosting public investment stimulates private capital formation, output, employment, and wages in the long run. The impact effects depend critically on whether public capital is modeled as a stock or as a flow. The welfare benefits are unevenly distributed across generations since capital ownership, and the capital gain induced by the policy shock, rises with age, and because wages rise only gradually under the stock interpretation of public capital. A suitable egalitarian bond policy can be employed to ensure that everybody gains to the same extent. With this additional instrument the intergenerational externality can be neutralized and the resulting efficiency gain coincides with the one obtained in the corresponding representative agent model. A simple modified golden rule for public investment is derived which takes into account the time that is needed to build the public capital stock.public investment;intergenerational welfare effects
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