Conventional pension systems suffer from a design defect which makes them financially unsustainable, and a source of inefficiency for the economy as a whole. The paper outlines a second-best policy which includes a public pension system made up of two parallel schemes, a Bismarckian one allowing...

The relationship between government and parents is modelled as a principal-agent problem, with the former in the role of principal and the latter in the role of agents. We make three major points. The first is that, if the well-being of the child depends not only on luck, but also on parental...

The paper innovates on the existing optimal taxation literature by taking fertility as endogenous, and allowing for households to be di¤erentiated by ability to raise children, as well as wage rates. In a context where the government cannot observe personal abilities, fertility behaviour...

The paper re-examines the idea that a family can be viewed as a community governed by a self-enforcing constitution, and extends existing results in two directions. First, it identi?es circumstances in which a constitution is renegotiation-proof. Second, it introduces parental altruism. The...

This chapter examines the scope for mutually beneficial intergenerational cooperation, and looks at various attempts to theoretically explain the emergence of norms and institutions that facilitate this cooperation. The contributions reviewed come from branches of economics as far apart as...

A Beveridgean pension scheme invariably reduces the marginal return to labour, and will thus discourage labour. A Bismarckian scheme can do so only if it is not actuarially fair, or in the presence of credit rationing. In any case, the same pension contribution will discourage labour less if the...

The effects and optimal choice of policy instruments affecting the family (child benefits, taxes on child-specific commodities, etc.) are examined within the context of a household economics model with fertility choice. The simultaneous consideration of child benefits and commodity taxes in the...