We introduce a tractable model of post-retirement saving behavior in which households have a precautionary motive arising from uninsured health status risks. The model distinguishes between annuitized and non-annuitized wealth, emphasizes the importance of asset composition in determining...

The evidence continues to mount. As our industrial economy continues to dump large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, we are affecting the atmospheric chemistry of the global climate. This has led prominent physicist and climate scientist James Hansen to reach the “startling conclusion”...

Robert Lucas's recent paper on supply-side economics (1990) finds a large welfare loss from taxation of interest income in the U.S. economy. The present work extends the analysis of steady-state equilibria to cover the transition paths that accompany tax reform. Calculations then show a 25...

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 investigates the role in household wealth accumulation of saving for bequests. It employs data from a 1988 survey of TIAA-CREF annuitants designed to measure pension and other net worth as well as lifetime earnings. About half of the households in the data plan to leave estates and...

The literature evaluating tax changes within an intertemporal general equilibrium framework subdivides into representative agent and overlapping generations formulations. Papers in the former class have developed techniques analogous to those routine for static analyses. The author shows that...