This paper addresses two issues. The first is whether demographic change was plausibly responsible for the run-up in stock prices over the last decade, and whether the attempt by the baby boom cohort to cash out of its investments in the period 2010-30 might lead to an quot;asset meltdown.quot;...

Population aging is primarily the result of past declines in fertility, which produced a decadeslong period in which the ratio of dependents to working age adults was reduced. Rising old-age dependency in many countries represents the inevitable passing of this quot;demographic...

Recent research has shown that rich' households save at much higher rates than others (see Carroll (2000); Dynan, Skinner, and Zeldes (1996); Gentry and Hubbard (1998); Huggett (1996); Quadrini (1999)). This paper documents another large difference between the rich and the rest of the...

This paper compares the dynamics of two general equilibrium models of endogenous growth in which agents have comparison utility.' In the inward-looking' economy, individuals care about how their consumption in the current period compares to their own consumption in the past (one way to describe...

Saving and growth are strongly positively correlated across countries. Recent empirical evidence suggests that this correlation holds largely because high growth leads to high saving, not the other way around. This evidence is difficult to reconcile with standard growth models, since...

We examine the relationship between income growth and saving using both cross-country and household data. At the aggregate level, we find that growth Granger causes saving, but that saving does not Granger cause growth. Using household data, we find that households with predictably higher income...