This paper explores the effect of letting individuals choose their retirement age in a world of uncertainty where there exist both defined benefit (DB) and de?ned contribution (DC) pension plans. The paper shows that giving individuals the flexibility to determine when to retire is an important...

Introduced by Samuelson (1975), the Serendipity Theorem states that the competitive economy will converge towards the optimum steady-state provided the optimum population growth rate is imposed. This paper aims at exploring whether the Serendipity Theorem still holds in an economy with risky...

This paper provides a unified treatment of externalities associated with fertility and human capital accumulation within pas-as-you-go pension systems. It considers an overlapping generations model in which every generation consists of high earners and low earners with the proportion of types...

We study optimal redistributive taxes when individuals differ in two characteristics - earning ability and leisure needs - assumed to be imperfectly correlated. Individuals have private information about their abilities but needs are observable. With two different levels of observable needs the...

This paper reviews a number of recent contributions that study pension design with myopic individuals. Its objective is to explore how the presence of more or less myopic individuals affects pension design when individuals differ also in productivity. This double heterogeneity gives rise to an...

This paper discusses the merits of wealth transfer taxation on both efficiency and equity grounds. It first deals with the popular debate that is dominated by American economists. This debate concerns the US estate tax, which is one, among many, types of wealth transfer tax. After addressing the...