Pension and child care policies with endogenous fertility

This paper presents an examination of effects of a child allowance on fertility under a pay-as-you-go pension system. In these analyses, the child allowance is financed by taxation of two kinds: an income tax and a consumption tax. Comparative static analyses show that a child allowance financed by income tax revenues can always raise fertility. Similarly with income tax, a child allowance financed by consumption tax can always raise fertility. Furthermore, our paper presents examination of optimal child allowance and transfer for older people.     

Child policy ineffectiveness in an overlapping generations small open economy with human capital accumulation and public education

Motivated by the recent decrease in the number of children experienced in several developed countries, in this paper we consider a small open economy model with overlapping generations, endogenous fertility and human capital formation through public education, and look at the role the government can play in affecting fertility through the widely used child allowance policy. Contrary to conventional view, we show that the public provision of child allowances is fertility-neutral in the long run, that is it is not effective as a pro-natalist policy, while also reducing human capital accumulation. In contrast, the financing of the public education system is beneficial to both fertility and human capital. These results hold in the cases of both fixed and time cost of children.     

Capital depreciation allowances,redistributive taxation,and economic growth

Are capital depreciation allowances when coupled with capital income taxes good instruments for redistribution in the long run? In a simple two-agent-economy I find that accelerated depreciation is good for growth, but bad for redistribution. The opposite holds for capital income taxes. However, in a feedback Stackelberg equilibrium, where the government is the leader and the private sector the follower, the depreciation allowance is maximal in the long run, time-consistent optimum. This removes the accumulation distortion of capital income taxes. Furthermore, the latter, and so redistribution, is found to be generically nonzero in the time-consistent optimum, and depends on the social weight of transfers receivers, the pretax factor income distribution, the intertemporal elasticity of substitution and the time preference rate. Thus, accelerated depreciation allowances are an important indirect tool for redistribution. The tax scheme allows for a separation of “efficiency” and “equity” concerns for redistributive policies.     

Mixed Duopoly and Environment

We show under general demand and cost conditions that in a mixed duopoly with pollution the government can implement the socially optimal outputs and abatements by a tax‐subsidy scheme and keeping the public firm fully public. The scheme requires taxing outputs and subsidizing abatements at different rates, unlike a pollution tax. Our result improves on the shortcoming of a pollution tax to implement the social optimum. We also show that when the private firm is partly foreign‐owned, the government will adopt some privatization and will not implement the social optimum, though the social optimum is implementable.     

PAYG pensions, tax-cum-subsidy and A-Pareto efficiency

An overlapping generation’s small open economy with endogenous fertility and time cost of children is analysed to show that the command optimum can be decentralised in a market setting using a PAYG transfer from the young to the old and a tax-cum-subsidy policy (i.e., a linear wage tax on labour income collected and rebated in a lump-sum way within the younger working-age generation). Indeed, the latter instrument stimulates fertility and then reduces the opportunity cost of children. Moreover, by applying the generalised notion of Pareto efficiency introduced by Golosov et al. (2007) in a context of endogenous population, some normative conclusions can be drawn: since only the utilities of those who are actually born are evaluated, we apply the concept of A-efficiency and conclude that when PAYG pensions are in existence, the tax-cum-subsidy policy can effectively be used as an alternative to the child allowance to internalise the externality of children, while also representing an A-Pareto improvement.     

Fertility and climate change*

A quarter of the total increase in emissions is attributable to the growth of emissions per capita, whereas three-quarters are due to population growth. This evidence notwithstanding, demography in climate–economy models typically follows exogenous trends. We develop a climate–economy integrated model with endogenous fertility through a quality–quantity trade-off. The decentralization of the social optimum requires two complementary instruments: a carbon pricing policy and family planning interventions. Global population increases and reaches a peak, depending on the scenario, between 11.6 billion in the social optimum and 14.6 billion if only carbon prices are implemented. Fertility costs (i.e., the net present value of the climate-related costs per child) are in 2020 estimated to be about 22,000 euros in the “social optimum” scenario, and about 88,000 euros in the “second-best with fertility taxes” scenario. Carbon pricing tends to have a rebound effect as it increases population growth leading to higher future emissions. Our results highlight the effects of fertility choices and global population on climate change, quantifying the cost of neglecting the interaction.     

Measuring technical progress in matching models of the labour market

Technical Progress in matching models of the labour market has not received serious attention. This article examines the impact on the results of these models when an attempt is made to allow time to enter in a realistic fashion, and finds that recently published results on the possibility of multiple equilibria are overturned. Also, different parametric representations of the matching technology are compared, with problems of more general forms not satisfying regularity conditions being identified. While the possibility of Pareto-improving government intervention due to multiple equilibria arising out of increasing returns to scale cannot be supported, the results suggest a role for government intervention in the labour market.     

Pensions and fertility incentives

Abstract.  This paper discusses the welfare implications of a pay‐as‐you‐go pension reform by introducing a child benefit in an endogenous fertility setting. In the model of a small open economy, higher fertility is associated with a reduction of lifetime labour supply. The optimum share of fertility‐related pensions is always below unity, but generally positive. The former is true, since individuals do not take into account the impact of their labour supply choice on the parent generation. It is demonstrated that child allowances are equivalent to fertility‐related pensions as instruments to achieve the optimum allocation. JEL classification: H23, H55, J13     

Ability transmission,endogenous fertility and educational subsidy

In this study, we attempt to investigate how educational subsidy, childcare allowance and family allowance affect economic growth and income distribution on the basis of simulation models which incorporate intergenerational ability transmission and endogenous fertility. The simulation results show that financial support for higher education can both increase economic growth and reduce income inequality, especially if the abilities of parent and child are closely correlated. In contrast with educational subsidy, raising childcare allowance or family allowance has limited impacts on growth and income inequality.     

Optimal Taxation with a Trade-off Between Income and Children

This paper explores the implications of endogenous fertility for optimal redistributive taxation in the presence of a trade-off between labour income and children. The labour supply is a decreasing function of the desired quantity and quality of children. Since children enter into the parent's budget constraint in a nonlinear form, their shadow prices are directly distorted by the income tax rate. It is shown that the substitution effects of the income tax rate on the quantity and quality of children cannot be signed uniquely although the effect on labour supply is negative. The aggregate substitution effect of the income tax rate on the quantity of children plays an important role in the determination of the signs of the income tax and child subsidy rates at a Rawlsian or Benthamite social welfare optimum.
JEL Classification Numbers: H21, J13, J22     

Child Labour Education and Nutrition in Rural India

Decisions concerning child labour, education and nutrition are taken by parents simultaneously with decisions affecting fertility and infant mortality. This implies that child labour cannot be abolished without altering the conditions that make it optimal for parents to make their children work. Such conditions can be altered not only by educational policies, such as free or subsidized provision of school facilities, but also by more broadly aimed policies, such as sanitation or preventive medicine.     

DOES PRO‐POPULATION POLICY RAISE PER CAPITA CONSUMPTION?

We theoretically analyze the effects of a child allowance, an improvement in the efficiency of child rearing and a labour income tax on the fertility rate and per capita consumption. The effects on per capita consumption are opposite in the absence, and the presence, of unemployment. For example, a child allowance urges people to have more children and allocate more labour to child rearing, decreasing labour supply for the purpose of commodity production. Therefore, under full employment it decreases per capita consumption. In the presence of unemployment, however, it reduces the deflationary gap and hence stimulates per capita consumption.     

User Charges as Redistributive Devices

In this model, a mix of public and private provision of private goods arises naturally in the economy. We characterize the social optimum in the presence of a linear tax/public expenditure system and show how a user charge can be welfare- or Pareto-improving, when the users are the poor. The charge discourages the rich from opting into the public program and allows the policymaker to restructure the tax/expenditure system in a way that is beneficial for the poor. If the ensuing welfare gain is large enough to outweigh the loss for the remaining users, a charge is desirable.     

Investment subsidies and redistributive capital income taxation in a neoclassical growth model

How do investment subsidies bear on pure redistribution when coupled with capital income taxes? In a heterogeneous agent, neoclassical growth framework it is found that on impact, with no optimizing behavior, investment subsidies are good for growth but bad for redistribution. The opposite holds for capital income taxes. But when the government acts as a Stackelberg leader vis-à-vis the private sector (the follower), the optimal feedback policy is by construction time-consistent and implies that in a long-run optimum the tax scheme does not distort accumulation. This holds regardless of social preferences. For the feedback Stackelberg equilibrium I find that (pure) redistribution can go either way and capital income taxes are nonzero in the long-run, time-consistent optimum, depending on the social weight of those who receive redistributive transfers, the distribution of pretax factor incomes, and the intertemporal elasticity of substitution. It is argued that investment subsidies may be an important indirect tool for redistribution, and may allow for the separation of “efficiency” and “equity” concerns.     

On the optimality of social status seeking

We present an endogenous growth model in which households display their social status by holding not only capital but also bonds. According to conventional wisdom, the quest for social status provides an incentive for individuals to accumulate wealth, which stimulates economic growth and elevates it to a socially optimal level. Instead, we show that portfolio allocation is crucial to the growth-enhancing effect of the quest for social status. If households exhibit their social status by accumulating physical capital and holding government bonds, the quest for social status may not increase economic growth. As a result, social status seeking cannot achieve the social optimum. Calibrating our model to data, we find that if government bonds constitute part of the wealth for households’ quest for social status, the quest for social status decreases economic growth.     

Pareto-Improving Redistribution and Pure Public Goods

In the pure public good model, the Nash equilibrium associated with one initial income distribution may Pareto dominate the equilibrium associated with another distribution of the same aggregate income. We explore this possibility and examine its implications for Pareto-improving policy intervention by undertaking a comparative static analysis of Pareto-improving tax-financed increases in pure public good provision. Under some circumstances, a government can engineer policies that raise public good provision while increasing the well-being of contributors and non-contributors. Crucial factors promoting this outcome involve a large number of non-contributors, a high marginal valuation for the public good by non-contributors and a large aggregate response of contributors to changes in their income.     

国内外农村最低生活保障制度变迁及其启示

我国农村社会救助政策和制度及其变迁,特别是对农村最低生活保障制度的探索反映出社会理念的进步和制度水平的提高。针对国外农村最低生活保障制度的发展,选择了五个国家的情况进行了分析。通过对国内外农村最低生活保障制度变迁的分析,我们可以得到以下几点启示：应明确农村最低生活保障制度的定位、农村低保应该处理好与自立脱贫之间的关系、加强政府与民间的合作、加强农村最低生活保障的立法、设立合理的农村低保基准线。     

The optimum population and growth: a new look; a modification to include a preference for children in the welfare function

An econometric model is proposed whereby optimum population levels can be defined. An optimum population is less than the maximum and varies according to several factors. The static optimum population which determines optimum solely by per capita income is inadequate since any level of welfare can always be increased by merely reducing the population. Other conditions for figuring social welfare must be used. A dynamic optimum population must be figured on the basis of such factor s as a preference for leisure or for open spaces. The prediction of optimum population levels is useful for the formulation of social policy.     

Social security and risk sharing

In this paper we identify conditions under which the introduction of a pay-as-you-go social security system is ex ante Pareto-improving in a stochastic OLG economy with capital accumulation and land. We argue that these conditions are consistent with realistic specifications of the parameters of the economy. In our model financial markets are complete and competitive equilibria interim Pareto efficient. Therefore, a welfare improvement can only be obtained if agents? welfare is evaluated ex ante, and arises from an improvement in intergenerational risk sharing. We also examine the optimal size of a given social security system as well as its optimal reform.     

Backward Intergenerational Goods and Endogenous Fertility

This paper characterizes the consequences of introducing the public provision of intergenerational goods to the elderly in a model with endogenous fertility. With exogenous fertility, it has been shown that the government can mandate the first‐best outcome by simply imposing the socially optimal transfer. By contrast, with endogenous fertility, the government can no longer enforce this outcome. This is due, in part, to the effects of mandatory provision on the birth rate. However, taxes may still have a salubrious effect on social welfare as they can eliminate particularly bad equilibria.