A disturbing feature of the conventional objective function for intertemporal decisions under uncertainty is that the agent's attitudes toward intertemporal substitution and risk aversion are entangled. This paper shows that, in contrast to common perception, the two attitudes can be completely...

This paper investigates the impact of the desire to keep up with the Joneses (KUJ) on economic growth and optimal tax policy in a continuous time overlapping generations model with AK technology and gradual retirement. Due to the desire to KUJ, the propensity to consume out of total wealth rises...

This paper shows that a Nash equilibrium consisting of strategies of choosing a Pareto inefficient transition path is selected by households even without frictions as a result of the revealed government failure in supervision of financial markets. The Pareto inefficiency causes the generation of...

This paper shows that a Nash equilibrium consisting of strategies of choosing a Pareto inefficient transition path is selected by households even without frictions as a result of the revealed government failure in supervision of financial markets. The Pareto inefficiency causes the generation of...

Prolonged rapid growth, i.e. a "catching-up" process, is known to be accompanied by high rates of household saving. This phenomenon is central in explaining the direction of international capital flows and trade imbalances in the past several decades, yet it is very much in contradiction to...

This thesis is built upon two core arguments. The first is the notion that the demographic transition should be narrated through the perspective of ageing rather than population growth and the second is that ageing on a macroeconomic level represents a strong driver of international capital...

Using the Chinese urban household survey data between 1997 and 2006, we find that income inequality has a negative (positive) impact on households’ consumption (savings), even after we control for family income. We argue that people save to improve their social status when social status is...

This paper investigates household decisions when individual utility depends on a consumption reference level. The desire to ``keep up with the Joneses'' represents one such example. The prior literature shows that, in a Ramsey model, consumption externalities have no impact on steady state...

This paper analyzes the optimal consumption behavior of a consumer who faces uninsurable labor income risk and borrowing constraints. In particular, it provides conditions under which the decision rule for consumption is a concave function of existing assets. The current study presents two main...

Two key components of the upcoming health reform are a reorganization of the individual health insurance market and an increase in income redistribution in the economy. Which component contributes more to the welfare outcome of the reform? We address this question by constructing a general...