Rejuveniles and Growth

Rejuveniles are "grown-ups who cultivate juvenile tastes in products and entertain-ment". In this note, we study a standard AK growth model of overlapping gener-ations populated by rejuveniles. For our purposes, rejuveniles are old agents whoderive utility from "keeping up" their consumption with that of the current young.We …nd that such cross-generational keeping up is capable of generating interestingequilibrium growth dynamics, including growth cycles. No such growth dynamics ispossible either in the baseline model, one where no such generational consumptionexternality exists, or for almost any other form of keeping up. Steady-state growthin a world with rejuveniles may be higher than that obtained in the baseline model.[...]