<DIV>In 1965, landmark legislation established the national Medicare system as a means of insuring access to medical care for all elderly citizens. Today, rocketing medical costs combined with a rapidly aging population have thrown the Medicare system off balance, moving it perilously close to...</div>

Using an overlapping generations model with endogenous but uncertain longevity, this article analyzes the effects of public old-age pensions on longevity choice and capital accumulation. When agents are not altruistic, increases in old-age pensions are longevity-neutral for golden rule economies...

We use a simple lifetime utility maximization model to study the problem of medical resource allocation. This model leads to a welfare specification with a QALY (quality-adjusted life-year) component that captures an individual's preferences over both life expectancy and health status. The goal...

This paper introduces intergenerational equity into the analysis of transitions to a market economy. Analyzing Social Security privatization, we find that payroll tax labor market distortions, rather than capital tax capital market distortions, are the major source of any efficiency gain from a...

Federal discount rate policies advocate both a high rate representing the marginal productivity of capital and a low rate representing the government borrowing rate. These differential discount rate policies could be inconsistent and biased in favor of projects on which the lower discount rate...

This paper models the midlife crisis as a decision on whether and when to realize a life dream, incorporating the key components of three psychology theories of midlife crises. It explains why a crisis (dream realization) tends to occur in the midlife if it occurs at all. Other results include...

We study the consumption pattern for a "repeated good" in which individuals choose both consumption frequency and intensity in response to income, price and setup cost. Results include that increased setup costs reduce frequency and increase intensity, and that the effects of a setup cost...