Long-run economic growth is analysed in a global model with many small countriesprone to national level total factor productivity shocks. The possibility ofprecautionary saving or dissaving is a function of the higher-order moments and thecross-moments of the factor income distributions, which...

If households and firms face different interest rates, there may be mutual gains in forming seniority wage contracts, which facilitate implicit saving by younger workers, who might otherwise save either little or nothing at all at low interest rates. A three-period OLG model is presented with...

We consider the effects of an imperfectly competitive banking sector on the capital stock in a version of the two-period Diamond OLG model, focusing on how profits are returned. There are two broad alternatives: profits may be taxed and returned to households exogenously as fiscal transfers or...

The abolition or reform of unfunded pensions will generally make members of a transitional generation worse-off, because of the "double burden" of funding their own retirement along with that of paying off the unfunded pension liability. Reform will also lower the time-path of interest rates,...

A switch from a Bismarckian (BIS) earnings-related to a Beveridgean (BEV) flat ratepay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension scheme will raise the variance of personal replacementratios and, hence, the variance of individual interest-saving elasticities. A monopolisticfinancial sector can then make greater...

We develop a two-country labour-market model characterised by union wage-bargaining, in which the unemployed incur individual-specific costs of seeking work abroad. We explore the effects on equilibrium unemployment and population in each country of changes in union bargaining strength,...

This paper analyses a model of overlapping generations in which agents who do notparticipate in the labor market are unable to borrow. Thus an increase in a fullyfunded pension raises aggregate savings even with a fixed participation rate, sinceprivate savings are not crowded out one-for-one....

We reconsider pay-as-you-go pensions (PAYG) policy in a version of the Diamond(1965) overlapping generations model with an imperfectly competitive financialsector and with a low rate of tax on its profits. PAYG then has two effects on capital:the well-known negative crowding-out effect in...

If unfunded pensions crowd-out private savings, pensions reform should raise the timepath of capital. Even if reform has long-run benefits, there will still be a “doubleburden”problem for a transitional generation. Assuming that there is an asset whichdiscounts the present value of an income...

Instituting an initial round of centralized wage setting before an ultimate round ofdecentralized wage bargaining may raise actually raise employment. A general multiequilibriummodel is presented with strategic complementarities in theimplementation of a new technology through aggregate demand...