Political Equilibria with Social Security |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Food, Environmental and Nutritional Sciences (DeFENS), University of Milan, Milan, Italy;2. EcoTechSystems Ltd., Ancona, Italy;3. Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering Division (BESE), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia;1. Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Rome, Via del Castro Laurenziano 9, 00161, Rome, Italy;2. Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), Via A. Depretis 72, 00184, Rome, Italy |
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Abstract: | We model pay-as-you-go social security systems as the outcome of majority voting within a overlapping generations model with production. When voting, individuals make two choices, pay the elderly their pensions or default, which amount to promise themselves next period. Under general circumstances, there exist equilibria where pensions are voted into existence and maintained. Our analysis uncovers two reasons for this. The traditional one relies on intergenerational trade and occurs at inefficient equilibria. A second reason relies on the monopoly power of the median voter. It occurs when a reduction in current saving induces a large enough increase in future return on capital to compensate for the negative effect of the tax. We characterize the steady state and dynamic properties of these equilibria and study their welfare properties. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C78, |
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