Longevity and Life‐cycle Savings*

We add health and longevity to a standard model of life‐cycle saving and show that, under plausible assumptions, increases in life expectancy lead to higher savings rates at every age, even when retirement is endogenous. In a stationary population these higher savings rates are offset by increased old age dependency, but during the disequilibrium phase, when longevity is rising, the effect on aggregate savings rates can be substantial. We find empirical support for this effect using a cross‐country panel of national savings rates.     

RELIGIONS,FERTILITY, AND GROWTH IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

We investigate the extent to which the pronatalism of religions impedes growth via the fertility/education channel. Using Southeast Asian censuses, we show empirically that being Catholic, Buddhist, or Muslim significantly raises fertility, especially for couples with intermediate to high education levels. With these estimates, we identify the parameters of a structural model. Catholicism is strongly pro‐child (increasing total spending on children), followed by Buddhism, whereas Islam is more pro‐birth (redirecting spending from quality to quantity). Pro‐child religions depress growth in its early stages by lowering savings and labor supply. In the later stages of growth, pro‐birth religions impede human capital accumulation.     

Insurance of Household Risks and the Rebalancing of the Chinese Economy: Health Insurance,Health Expenses and Household Savings

This paper studies the effects of a public insurance system, the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) on household savings in rural China. We develop a theoretical model in which we explain the impact of health insurance on savings through the impact of health insurance on out‐of‐pocket (OOP) health expense given the household level of wealth and seriousness of illness. We test the model empirically using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey. We run endogenous and exogenous quantile regressions to evaluate the effects of NCMS participation on the distributions of household savings and OOP health expense. The impact of NCMS varies with the seriousness of illness. The NCMS induces an increase in OOP health expense for mild illness and, inversely, a decrease in health payments for more serious illnesses. The NCMS also leads to a higher incidence of catastrophic healthcare spending. The impact of the NCMS, given a certain state of illness, also varies with the household level of wealth. Poor households face health expense for both mild and serious illnesses. As the NCMS has opposite effects on the OOP expense for these two kinds of illness, we observe no effect on poor households’ precautionary savings. Because the decrease in OOP health expense for mild illness is larger for less poor households, the NCMS induces a decrease in their savings. For the most affluent households, the higher decrease in OOP spending on most moderate illness is dominated by a sharp increase in catastrophic expense, causing an increase in savings. To significantly reduce household savings and enhance household consumption, the NCMS has to offer better coverage against both serious and catastrophic health risks.     

Fiscal Incidence in Ghana

We use methods developed by the Commitment to Equity Institute to assess the effects of government taxation, social spending and indirect subsidies on poverty and inequality in Ghana. We also simulate several policy reforms to assess their distributional consequences. Results show that, although the country has some very progressive taxes and well‐targeted expenditures, the extent of fiscal redistribution is small, but about what one would expect given Ghana's income level and relatively low initial inequality. Results for poverty reduction are less encouraging: were it not for the in‐kind benefits from health and education spending, the overall effect of government spending and taxation would actually increase poverty in Ghana. Eliminating energy subsidies and at the same time reallocating part of the savings to well‐targeted transfer programs could lower the fiscal deficit while reducing inequality and protecting the poor.     

Ageing,government budgets,retirement, and growth

We analyze the short and long-run effects of demographic ageing – increased longevity and reduced fertility – on per-capita growth. The OLG model captures direct effects, working through adjustments in the savings rate, labor supply, and capital deepening, and indirect effects, working through changes of taxes, government spending components and the retirement age in politico-economic equilibrium. Growth is driven by capital accumulation and productivity increases fueled by public investment. The closed-form solutions of the model predict taxation and the retirement age in OECD economies to increase in response to demographic ageing and per-capita growth to accelerate. If the retirement age was held constant, the growth rate in politico-economic equilibrium would essentially remain unchanged, due to a surge of social-security transfers and crowding out of public investment.     

The patterns and determinants of longevity in Russia's regions: Evidence from panel data

In this paper we examine whether regions of Russia have been converging or diverging in their longevity levels during the 1990s and evaluate the divergence effect of the 1998 financial crisis. We also estimate the impact of changes in poverty and public health spending on inter-temporal variations in longevity using regional-level panel data for 77 Russian regions from 1994 to 2000. Finally, we investigate the extent to which the gradual recovery in longevity observed after 1994 was derailed by the 1998 financial crisis and the public policy shifts required for regions to regain their Soviet-era levels of longevity. We find a significant negative effect of the 1998 crisis on longevity independently of the factors related directly to poverty and public health spending. In addition, a permanent negative shock to the incidence of poverty and the amount of publicly-provided health care in a region has enduring consequences on the population's health. Finally, the effect of increases in public health spending on longevity is related positively to the incidence of poverty. Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (4) (2005) 788–813.     

Quasi-hyperbolic discounting and social security systems

Hyperbolic discounting has become a common assumption for modeling bounded rationality with respect to individual savings decisions. We examine the effects of hyperbolic discounting on the comparison of alternative social security systems. We show that this form of bounded rationality breaks the equivalence between funded and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) systems established in Sheshinski and Weiss [Sheshinski, E., Weiss, Y., 1981. Uncertainty and optimal social security. Quarterly Journal of Economics 95, 189-206]. Intergenerational transfers within a PAYG economy are usually secured by the social security system and independent of longevity, whereas this is not the case for the funded economy. The savings level under hyperbolic discounting is lower than under exponential discounting [Laibson et al., 1998], but the ratio between the savings level under hyperbolic discounting within a funded economy and a PAYG economy depends on the effectiveness of the commitment devices. It is shown that if individuals are hyperbolic discounters, then in a PAYG economy any change in the mandated level of intergenerational transfers is neutralized by individuals’ voluntary bequests. This does not apply to a funded system.     

Longevity and environmental quality in an OLG model

Whereas existing OLG models with endogenous longevity neglect the impact of environmental quality on mortality, this paper studies the design of the optimal public policy in a two-period OLG model where longevity is influenced positively by health expenditures, but negatively by pollution due to production. It is shown that if agents, when choosing how much to spend on health, do not internalize the impact of their decision on environmental quality (i.e. the space available for each person), the decentralization of the social optimum requires a tax not only on capital income (to internalize the pollution externality), but, also, on health spending (to internalize the congestion externality). We also examine the second-best policy under a limited set of taxation instruments, and explore its sensitivity to the pollution process and to individual preferences.     

Population ageing and inflation with endogenous money creation

This paper models a mechanism through which population ageing may induce a deflationary process. We propose an overlapping-generations model (OLG) with money created by credits (inside money) and intergenerational trade. The model links demographic factors, such as fertility rates and longevity, to prices. We show that lower fertility rates lead to smaller demand for credit and lower money creation, which in turn cause a decline in prices. Changes in longevity affect prices through real savings and the capital market. Furthermore, a few links between interest rates and inflation are addressed; they arise in the general equilibrium and are not thoroughly discussed in literature. Long-run results are derived analytically; short-run dynamics are simulated numerically.     

Pay-as-you-go public pensions with endogenous fertility

A 1986 "model of public pensions is generalized to allow for endogenous fertility. We show that gifts to the old, which can be viewed as social security contributions, are always positive in the steady state. An optimal stationary allocation is sustainable if savings are zero and fertility is exogenous. However, the optimal allocation is in general not sustainable. In particular, if a government enforces a social security plan setting the pension level at the optimal gifts and individuals optimize under the pension constraint, the resulting sustainable outcome is in general different from either the optimal or Nash outcome." The geographical focus is on developed countries.     

Economic Growth,Public Debt and Welfare: Comparing Three Budgetary Rules

Abstract. We present an endogenous growth model with externalities of capital and elastic labor supply where we allow for public debt and welfare‐enhancing public spending. We analyze different debt policies as regards convergence to a balanced growth path and their effects on long‐run growth and welfare. Three budgetary rules are considered: the balanced budget rule, a budgetary rule where debt grows in the long run but at a rate lower than the balanced growth rate and a rule where public debt grows at the same rate as all other economic variables but where it guarantees that the intertemporal budget constraint is fulfilled.     

Unequal Longevities and Lifestyles Transmission

Whereas studies on the optimal taxation under endogenous longevity assume a fixed heterogeneity of lifestyles, this paper analyses the optimal tax policy in an economy where unequal longevities are the unintended outcome of differences in lifestyles, and where lifestyles are transmitted across generations. For that purpose, we develop a three-period OLG model where the population, who ignores the negative impact of excessive work on longevity, is partitioned in two groups with different tastes for leisure, and follows an adaptation/imitation process  à la   Bisin and Verdier (2001) . The optimal short- and long-run Pigouvian taxes on wages are shown to differ, because the latter correct agents' myopia, but also internalize intergenerational externalities due to the socialization process. The internalization of composition effects raises the Pigouvian tax on the wage of one type of agents, but reduces it on the other type, in such a way as to induce the optimal long-run partition of the population.     

CENTRAL BANK INDEPENDENCE AND THE MONETARY INSTRUMENT PROBLEM

We study the monetary instrument problem in a dynamic noncooperative game between separate, discretionary, fiscal and monetary policy makers. We show that monetary instruments are equivalent only if the policy makers' objectives are perfectly aligned; otherwise an instrument problem exists. When the central bank is benevolent while the fiscal authority is short‐sighted relative to the private sector, excessive public spending and debt emerge under a money growth policy but not under an interest rate policy. Despite this property, the interest rate is not necessarily the optimal instrument.     

Note on Longevity and Aggregate Savings

In a recent paper in this journal, Bloom, Canning and Graham (2003) model the effect of changes in longevity on individual savings. They proceed to present empirical findings about the relation between longevity and aggregate savings. There is a missing link between their empirics and theory: the changes in the populations age density distribution due to increased longevity. This note provides such an aggregation analysis within a simple model with uncertain survival, endogenous life‐cycle consumption and retirement age. It is shown that, with continuous annuitization, an increase in expected longevity raises aggregate steady‐state savings. The magnitude of this effect depends on the economy's age‐specific distribution and on the elasticity of optimum retirement to changes in longevity.     

Longevity,Fertility and Economic Growth: Do Environmental Factors Matter?

Our study examines the effect of environmental factors on the economic decisions regarding fertility. We incorporate health‐damaging pollution into a three period overlapping generations model in which life expectancy, fertility and economic growth are all endogenous. We show that environmental factors can cause significant changes to the economy's demographics. In particular, the entrepreneurial choice of less polluting production processes, induced by a tax on emissions, can at some point in time lead to such changes as higher longevity and lower fertility rates. Thus, we provide a novel explanation on the positive relation between fertility rates and pollution. According to this, the causality on this relation may also work from the latter to the former. Furthermore, our model can account for the empirically observed N‐shaped correlation between pollution and income per capita.     

GENUINE SAVING AND POSITIONAL EXTERNALITIES

Much evidence suggests that people are concerned with their relative consumption. Yet, positional externalities have so far been ignored in savings‐based indicators of sustainable development. This article examines the implications of relative consumption concerns for measures of sustainable development by deriving analogues to genuine saving when people are concerned with their relative consumption. Unless the positional externalities have been internalized, an indicator of such externalities must be added to genuine saving to arrive at the proper measure of welfare change. We also show how relative consumption concerns affect the way public investment ought to be reflected in genuine saving.     

Population growth: A pure welfarist approach

In this study we propose a framework based on welfarist principles to deal with several issues concerned with population economics models, such as the Repugnant Conclusion, both in absolute and relative sense, the shape of childbearing costs and population dynamics, under both normative and positive perspectives. We show that the relative critical level criterion can avoid both the assumption of high childbearing costs and the absolute repugnant conclusion (ARC) but cannot avoid the relative repugnant conclusion (RRC). Moreover, optimal fertility is increased by technological shocks and displays cycles. Both ARC and RRC can be avoided by extending the model to a decentralized economy with consumption externalities; in the latter model, a technological shock reduces long‐run fertility and can generate cycles along the transitional path.     

Optimal social security in a dynastic model with human capital externalities,fertility and endogenous growth

In this paper we investigate the optimal scale of pay-as-you-go social security in a dynastic family model with human capital externalities, fertility and endogenous growth. Human capital externalities reduce the return to human capital investment and hence lead to under-investment in human capital and over-reproduction of the population. If the taste for the number of children is sufficiently weak relative to the taste for the welfare of children, social security can be welfare enhancing by reducing fertility and raising human capital investment per child.     

Useful Government Spending and Macroeconomic (In)stability under Balanced-Budget Rules

It has been shown that an otherwise standard one‐sector real business cycle model may exhibit indeterminacy and sunspots under a balanced‐budget rule that consists of fixed and “wasteful” government spending and proportional income taxation. However, the economy always displays saddle‐path stability and equilibrium uniqueness if the government finances endogenous public expenditures with a constant income tax rate. In this paper, we allow for productive or utility‐generating government purchases in either of these specifications. It turns out that the previous indeterminacy results remain unchanged by the inclusion of useful government spending. By contrast, the earlier determinacy results are overturned when public expenditures generate sufficiently strong production or consumption externalities. Our analysis thus illustrates that a balanced‐budget policy recommendation which limits the government's ability to change tax rates does not necessarily stabilize the economy against belief‐driven business cycle fluctuations.     

The Efficiency Consequences of Local Revenue Equalization: Tax Competition and Tax Distortions

This paper shows how a popular system of federal revenue equalization grants can limit tax competition among subnational governments, correct fiscal externalities, and increase government spending. Remarkably, an equalization grant can implement efficient policy choices by regional governments, even in the presence of differences in regional tax capacity, tastes for public spending, and population. If aggregate tax bases are elastic, however, equalization leads to excessive taxation. Efficiency can be achieved by a modified formula that equalizes a fraction of local revenue deficiencies equal to the fraction of taxes that are shifted backward to factor suppliers.