This paper reviews four well-known theoretical models of private bequest behavior, notes their differing implications for public policy, and discusses a way of empirically discriminating among them. Then it implements the test with micro data from Sweden (LLS) and the U.S. (PSID). The so-called...

Economists make extensive use of two separate descriptions of private saving behavior: the life-cycle (or overlapping generations) model, and models with intergenerational altruism. Analysis of the two frameworks is quite different, as are many of the long-run policy implications. This paper...

Data suggest that the distribution of wealth among households in the USA and UK has become more equal over the last century, though, at least for the USA, the pattern may have reversed recently. This paper shows that a model in which all households save for life-cycle reasons and some for...

Using a life-cycle model in which women divide their time between home and market work, we establish a link between retirement wealth and the value of forgone home production. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study to estimate the model's parameters and adjust the growth rate of GDP to...

Economists’ standard model assumes that improvements in total factor productivity (TFP) raise the marginal product of labor for all workers evenly. This paper uses an earnings dynamics regression model to study whether, in practice, older workers benefit less from TFP growth than younger...

We introduce a tractable model of post-retirement saving behavior in which households have a precautionary motive arising from uninsured health status risks. The model distinguishes between annuitized and non-annuitized wealth, emphasizes the importance of asset composition in determining...

The evidence continues to mount. As our industrial economy continues to dump large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, we are affecting the atmospheric chemistry of the global climate. This has led prominent physicist and climate scientist James Hansen to reach the “startling conclusion”...

Robert Lucas's recent paper on supply-side economics (1990) finds a large welfare loss from taxation of interest income in the U.S. economy. The present work extends the analysis of steady-state equilibria to cover the transition paths that accompany tax reform. Calculations then show a 25...