We study the effects of a social security reform in a large overlapping generations model where markets are incomplete and households face uninsurable idiosyncratic income shocks. We depart from the previous literature by assuming that, because of lack of commitment in the credit market, the...

Even though smokers incur higher health expenditures than nonsmokers of the same age, smokers have significantly higher mortality rates, so the expected lifetime health expenditure for a smoker is actually lower than for a nonsmoker. Because of this fact, some politicians and policy-makers have...

Emerging market economies typically exhibit a procyclical fiscal policy: public expenditures rise (fall) in economic expansions (recessions), whereas tax rates rise (fall) in bad (good) times. Additionally, the business cycle of these economies is characterized by countercyclical default risk....

This paper develops an overlapping agents model with age-specific mortality rates. The analytical framework also nests Blanchard's (1985, Journal of Political Economy 82, 1095–1117) "perpetual youth" model as a special, though perhaps not realistic, case. With age specific mortality...

The worldwide problem with pay-as-you-go, defined-benefits social security systems isn't just financial. Through a dynamic, overlapping-generations model where forming a family and bearing and educating children are choice variables, we show that social security taxes and benefits generate...

We explore the quantitative implications of uncertainty about the length of life and a lack of annuity markets for life cycle consumption in a general equilibrium overlapping generations model in which markets are otherwise complete. Empirical studies find that consumption displays a hump shape...