This file is part of IDEAS, which uses RePEc data


[ Papers | Articles | Software | Books | Chapters | Authors | Institutions | JEL Classification | NEP reports | Search | New papers by email | Author registration | Rankings | Volunteers | FAQ | Blog | Help! ]

Pension Sytems and the Allocation of Macroeconomic Risk

Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics
Author Info
Lans Bovenberg
Harald Uhlig

Additional information is available for the following registered author(s):

Abstract

This paper explores the optimal risk sharing arrangement between generations in an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth. We allow for nonseparable preferences, paying particular attention to the risk aversion of the old as well as overall ``life-cycle´´ risk aversion. We provide a fairly tractable model, which can serve as a starting point to explore these issues in models with a larger number of periods of life, and show how it can be solved. We provide a general risk sharing condition, and discuss its implications. We explore the properties of the model quantitatively. Among the key findings are the following. First and for reasonable parameters, the old typically bear a larger burden of the risk in productivity surprises, if old-age risk-aversion is smaller than life risk aversion, and vice versa. Thus, it is not necessarily the case that the young ensure smooth consumption of the old. Second, consumption of the young and the old always move in the same direction, even for population growth shocks. This result is in contrast to the result of a fully-funded decentralized system without risk-sharing between generations. Third, persistent increases in longevity will lead to lower total consumption of the old (and thus certainly lower per-period consumption of the old) as well as the young as well as higher work effort of the young. The additional resources are instead used to increase growth and future output, resulting in higher consumption of future generations.

Download Info
To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://sfb649.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/papers/pdf/SFB649DP2006-066.pdf
File Format: application/pdf
File Function:
Download Restriction: no

Publisher Info
Paper provided by Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany in its series SFB 649 Discussion Papers with number SFB649DP2006-066.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML, plain text, BibTeX, RIS (EndNote), ReDIF
Length: 96 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2006-066

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Spandauer Str. 1,10178 Berlin
Phone: +49-30-2093-5708
Fax: +49-30-2093-5617
Email:
Web page: http://sfb649.wiwi.hu-berlin.de
More information through EDIRC

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christine Polzer).

Related research
Keywords: Social optimum pension systems risk sharing overlapping generations

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination
E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy
O40 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General
H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Obstfeld, Maurice, 1994. "Risk-Taking, Global Diversification, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1310-29, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Roger H. Gordon & Hal R. Varian, 1985. "Intergenerational Risk Sharing," NBER Working Papers 1730, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Kenneth L. Judd & Sy-Ming Guu, 2001. "Asymptotic Methods for Asset Market Equilibrium Analysis," NBER Working Papers 8135, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones, 2005. "The value of life and the rise in health spending," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Robert C. Merton, 1981. "On the Role of Social Security as a Means for Efficient Risk-Bearing in an Economy Where Human Capital Is Not Tradeable," NBER Working Papers 0743, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Olivier Blanchard & Philippe Weil, 2001. "Dynamic Efficiency, the Riskless Rate, and Debt Ponzi Games under Uncertainty," Advances in Macroeconomics, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 1(advances/), pages 1031-1031. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  7. Robert J. Shiller, 1998. "Social Security and Institutions for Intergenerational, Intragenerational and International Risk Sharing," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1185, Cowles Foundation, Yale University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  8. Uhlig, Harald & Yanagawa, Noriyuki, 1996. "Increasing the capital income tax may lead to faster growth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(8), pages 1521-1540, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Weil, Philippe, 1990. "Nonexpected Utility in Macroeconomics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 105(1), pages 29-42, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Dirk Krueger & Felix Kubler, 2002. "Intergenerational Risk-Sharing via Social Security when Financial Markets Are Incomplete," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 407-410, May. [Downloadable!]
  11. Henning Bohn, 1998. "Risk Sharing in a Stochastic Overlapping Generations Economy," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series wp3-98, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara. [Downloadable!]
  12. Henning Bohn, . "Risk Sharing in a Stochastic Overlapping Generations Economy," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series 3-98, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara. [Downloadable!]
  13. Henning Bohn, 2004. "Intergenerational Risk Sharing and Fiscal Policy," 2004 Meeting Papers 22, Society for Economic Dynamics. [Downloadable!]
  14. Harald Uhlig, 1998. "A Toolkit for Analysing Nonlinear Dynamic Stochastic Models Easily," QM&RBC Codes 123, Quantitative Macroeconomics & Real Business Cycles. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  15. Steven J. Davis & Felix Kubler & Paul Willen, 2005. "Borrowing costs and the demand for equity over the life cycle," Working Papers 05-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  16. Krueger, Dirk & Kubler, Felix, 2004. "Computing equilibrium in OLG models with stochastic production," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(7), pages 1411-1436, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. George M. Constantinides & John B. Donaldson & Rajnish Mehra, 2002. "Junior Can'T Borrow: A New Perspective On The Equity Premium Puzzle," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 117(1), pages 269-296, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  18. Bodie, Zvi & Merton, Robert C. & Samuelson, William F., 1992. "Labor supply flexibility and portfolio choice in a life cycle model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(3-4), pages 427-449. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  19. Henning Bohn, 1999. "Social Security and Demographic Uncertainty: The Risk Sharing Properties of Alternative Policies," NBER Working Papers 7030, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Demange, G., 2000. "On Optimality of Intergenerational Risk Sharing," DELTA Working Papers 2000-05, DELTA (Ecole normale supérieure).
  21. Canton, E., 1996. "Business cycles in a two-sector model of endogenous growth," Discussion Paper 116, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
  22. Juan C. Conesa & Dirk Krueger, 1999. "Social Security Reform with Heterogeneous Agents," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 2(4), pages 757-795, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  23. Ravi Jagannathan & Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 1996. "Why should older people invest less in stock than younger people?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Sum, pages 11-23. [Downloadable!]
  24. Georges de Menil & Eytan Sheshinski, 2004. "Planning for the Optimal Mix of Paygo Tax and Funded Savings," DELTA Working Papers 2004-15, DELTA (Ecole normale supérieure). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  25. King, Robert G & Plosser, Charles I & Rebelo, Sergio T, 2002. "Production, Growth and Business Cycles: Technical Appendix," Computational Economics, Springer, vol. 20(1-2), pages 87-116, October. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  26. Assar Lindbeck & Mats Persson, 2003. "The Gains from Pension Reform," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 74-112, March.
    Other versions:
  27. Krüger, Dirk & Kubler, Felix, 2005. "Pareto Improving Social Security Reform when Financial Markets Are Incomplete," CEPR Discussion Papers 5039, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  28. Samuelson, Paul A, 1970. "The Fundamental Approximation Theorem of Portfolio Analysis in terms of Means, Variances, and Higher Moments," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(4), pages 537-42, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  29. Epstein, Larry G & Zin, Stanley E, 1989. "Substitution, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Consumption and Asset Returns: A Theoretical Framework," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(4), pages 937-69, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Christian Stoltenberg, 2006. "Real Balance Effects, Timing and Equilibrium Determination," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-073, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  2. Jenny Kragl & Julia Schmid, 2006. "Relational Contracts and Inequity Aversion," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-085, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  3. Dirk Temme & Henning Kreis & Lutz Hildebrandt, 2006. "PLS Path Modeling – A Software Review," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-084, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  4. Tim Grebe & Julia Schmid & Andreas Stiehler, 2006. "Do Individuals Recognize Cascade Behavior of Others? - An Experimental Study -," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-079, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Dirk Temme & Lutz Hildebrandt, 2006. "Formative Measurement Models in Covariance Structure Analysis: Specification and Identification," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-083, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  6. Matthias Paustian & Christian Stoltenberg, 2006. "Optimal Interest Rate Stabilization in a Basic Sticky-Price Model," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-072, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Enzo Giacomini & Wolfgang Härdle & Ekaterina Ignatieva & Vladimir Spokoiny, 2006. "Inhomogeneous Dependency Modelling with Time Varying Copulae," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-075, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  8. Szymon Borak & Wolfgang Härdle & Stefan Trück & Rafal Weron, 2006. "Convenience Yields for CO2 Emission Allowance Futures Contracts," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-076, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  9. Ying Chen & Wolfgang Härdle & Vladimir Spokoiny, 2006. "GHICA - Risk Analysis with GH Distributions and Independent Components," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-078, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  10. Carsten Trenkler & Pentti Saikkonen & Helmut Lütkepohl, 2006. "Testing for the Cointegrating Rank of a VAR Process with Level Shift and Trend Break," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-067, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
Statistics
Access and download statistics

Did you know? The most prolific authors have over 400 items listed on IDEAS.

This page was last updated on 2008-11-6.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut using RePEc data on a server sponsored by the Society for Economic Dynamics.