Security markets between generations are incomplete due to a biological trading constraint' that prevents living generations from negotiating contingent contracts with the unborn. This paper shows, however, that government policy can be used to replicate the trades that would have occurred if...

This paper shows that many common methods of privatizing social security fail to reduce labor market distortions when taxes are second best, challenging a key reason to privatize. Ironically, providing "transition relief" to workers alive at the time of the reform, in an effort to protect their...

Gokhale and Smetters put forward some criticisms concerning the indicators currently used to assess the financial sustainability of the U.S. Social Security program. They argue that these indicators create a misleading impression of the program's financial outlook and are biased against...

Despite being the standard growth model for several decades, little is actually known analytically about the dynamic properties of the neoclassical Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans growth model. This paper derives analytically the properties of the endogenous saving rate when technology takes the Constant...

This paper describes the deficiencies of the measures used to calculate the federal budget, make revenue and spending projections, and assess the sustainability of current fiscal policies. The nature of the deficiencies hides the tremendous impact that Social Security and Medicare commitments...

While college enrollment has more-than doubled since 1970, elite colleges have barely increased supply, instead reducing admit rates. We show that straightforward reasons cannot explain this behavior. We propose a model where colleges compete on prestige, measured using relative selectivity or...