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A Dynamic Politico-Economic Model of Intergenerational Contracts

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  • Francesco Lancia

    ()

  • Alessia Russo

    ()

Abstract

This paper investigates the conditions for the emergence of implicit intergenerational contracts without assuming reputation mechanisms, commitment technology and altruism. We present a tractable dynamic politico-economic model in OLG environment where politicians play Markovian strategies in a probabilistic voting environment, setting multidimensional political agenda. Both backward and forward intergenerational transfers, respectively in the form of pension benefits and higher education investments, are simultaneously considered in an endogenous human capital setting with labor income taxation. On one hand, social security sustains investment in public education; on the other hand investment in education creates a dynamic linkage across periods through both human and physical capital driving the economy toward di¤erent Welfare State Regimes. Embedding a repeated-voting setup of electoral competition, we find that in a dynamic efficient economy both forward and backward intergenerational transfers simultaneously arise. The equilibrium allocation is education efficient, but, due to political overrepresentation of elderly agents, the electoral competition process induces overtaxation compared with a Benevolent Government solution with balanced welfare weights.

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File URL: http://www.recent.unimore.it/wp/RECent-wp50.pdf
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics in its series Center for Economic Research (RECent) with number 050.

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Length: pages 45
Date of creation: Sep 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:mod:recent:050

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Web page: http://www.recent.unimore.it/
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Related research

Keywords: aging; Benevolent Government allocation; intergenerational redistribution; Markovian equilibria; repeated voting;

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References

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  22. Giorgio Bellettini & Carlotta Berti Ceroni, 1995. "Is Social Security Really Bad For Growth?," Working Papers 218, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
  23. Azzimonti, Marina & Sarte, Pierre-Daniel & Soares, Jorge, 2009. "Distortionary taxes and public investment when government promises are not enforceable," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 1662-1681, September.
  24. Lorenzo Forni, 2005. "Social Security as Markov Equilibrium in OLG Models," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(1), pages 178-194, January.
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Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. A Dynamic Politico-Economic Model of Intergenerational Contracts
    by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2010-10-13 20:15:04
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Cited by:
  1. Francesco Lancia & Alessia Russo, 2011. "Self-Commitment-Institutions and Cooperation in Overlapping Generations Games," Department of Economics 0668, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".

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