This paper investigates the consequences of an exogenous increase in U.S. government purchases. We find that in response to such a shock, employment, output, and nonresidential investment rise, while real wages, residential investment and consumption expenditures fall. The paper argues that a...

Without policy reforms, the aging of the U.S. population is likely to increase the burden of the currently unfunded social security and medicare systems. In this paper we build an applied general equilibrium model and incorporate the population projections made by the Social Security...

This paper reviews the long-term financial problems facing the U.S. Social Security system. Not only is the system out of long-term actuarial balance, but implicit rates of return on worker contributions are low and dropping. The paper discusses different approaches for dealing with the twin...

We consider a random matching model where agents have complete access to each others' histories. Exchange is motivated by risk sharing given random unobservable incomes. There is capital accumulation and an endogenous interest rate. The key feature of this environment is that information is...

Empirical evidence suggests that the poor spend a larger fraction of their income on gambling than the well-to-do. This paper shows that "means tests" for public-assistance eligibility could supply part of the explanation. Income support programs can distort private budget sets, conceivably...

This paper uses a new version of the Auerbach-Kotlikoff model to consider alternative ways to privatize the U.S. Social Security system. The new model incorporates intra- and intergenerational heterogeneity and is closely calibrated to U.S. fiscal institutions. Three privatization issues are...

When large, discrete technological improvements require the accumulation of research or infrastructural investment over time, growth paths display cyclical patterns even in the absence of any shocks. Particularly interesting equilibrium features of these cycles include declines in output and...

We investigate the welfare effects of eliminating business cycles in a model with substantial consumer heterogeneity. The heterogeneity arises from uninsurable and idiosyncratic uncertainty in preferences and employment, where regarding employment, we distinguish among employment and short- and...

This paper develops a model of endogenous growth with overlapping generations to investigate the joint determination of social security, public investment and growth in a small open economy. We show that a pure pay-as-you-go-system with indexed to wages benefits provides the taxpayers with the...