Planning strategies that maximize the Human Development Index (HDI) tend towards minimizing consumption and maximizing non-investment expenditures on education and health. Interestingly, such strategies also tend towards equitable outcomes, even though inequality aversion is not modelled in the...

Purpose – The human development index (HDI) and gender-related development index (GDI) have become accepted as leading measures for ranking human well being in different countries. The purpose of this paper is to identify the planning policies that improve these indices and to also suggest...

We extend Diamond’s (1965) OLG model to allow agents to choose whether to participate in the second period of life. The valuation of early exit (x) is a key parameter. We characterize competitive equilibria, efficient allocations, and predictions for income and life expectancy over time. We...

We extend Diamond's (1965) OLG model to allow agents to choose whether to participate in the second period of life. The valuation of early exit (x) is a key parameter. We characterize competitive equilibria, efficient allocations, and predictions for income and life expectancy over time. We find...

The Human Development Index (HDI) is widely used as an aggregate measure of overall human well-being. We examine the allocations implied by the maximization of this index using a standard growth model. Maximization of the HDI leads to consumption (excluding education and health expenditures)...

The Human Development Index (HDI) is widely used as an aggregate measure of overall human well being. We examine the allocations implied by the maximization of this index, using a standard growth model — an extended version of Mankiw, Romer, andWeil’s (1992) model — and compare these with...

The Human Development Index (HDI) is widely used as a measure of wellbeing. We examine the allocations implied by the maximization of this index using a standard growth model. Maximization leads to consumption (excluding education and health expenditures) being pushed to minimal levels. It also...

We consider the provision of deposit insurance as the outcome of a non-cooperative policy game between nations. Nations compete for deposits in order to protect their banking systems from the destabilizing impact of potential capital flight. Policies are chosen to attract depositors who...

This paper makes five contributions to the modeling of societies organized primarily according to age. First, it models the social rules adhered to by a particular age-group society, the Rendille of Northern Kenya. Second, it shows that their age-group rules are well represented by the standard...

From Africa through North America to Asia, anthropologists have found societies with formalized age-group systems. In these societies, social and economic relations between individuals are regulated by well-established rules governing transitions through the lifecycle. In this paper we detail...