Aging and political decision making on public pensions

In this paper decision making on public pensions in a representative democracy is modeled within the framework of the well-known two-overlapping-generations (OLG) general-equilibrium model with rational expectations. The model is used to analyze the effects of aging on the economy in general and on the evolution of public pension schemes in particular, where aging is interpreted as a combination of a decrease in the rate of population growth and an increase in the political influence of pensioners. Analytical results are derived for the long run as well as for the short run by the method of comparative statics and comparative dynamics respectively. It appears that an increase in transfers to the old is not guaranteed if due to aging their political power increases. JEL classification: J14, H55 Received April 5, 1995 / Accepted September 4, 1995     

Public pensions. The role of public choice and expectations

In this paper the public-choice approach to explaining the evolution of public pension schemes is surveyed. Emphasis is laid on the relation between expectations on future political decisions and future demographic and economic developments, on the one hand, and current political and economic decisions, on the other hand.Revised version of an invited lecture given at the Sixth ESPE-Conference, June 11–13, 1992, Gmunden in Austria.     

Too many migrants, too few services: a model of decision-making on immigration and integration with cultural distance

We model the political demand for immigrants as a trade-off that native voters face between having services, assumed to be produced only by unskilled and nonassimilated immigrants, and experiencing disutility due to the immigrant workers having a culture different from the native culture. Immigrants decide whether to integrate into the native culture. We show that if services are priced according to per unit costs, the market demand for immigrants will exceed the political demand. Market forces then lead to higher services prices, implying that the initially allowed number of immigrants is ‘politically’ too large.

Simple and complex gift exchange in the laboratory

We examine an experimental gift exchange game in which the players can improve on the unique no-gifts equilibrium by two different types of gift exchange: simple and complex exchange, respectively. Complex exchange gives higher payoffs than simple exchange, but it requires not only mutual trust, like with simple exchange, but also a substantial degree of coordination. We examine whether players are able to conclude simple and complex exchanges and how this is affected by the move and matching structure of the game. We find that the so-called partners treatment is a precondition for the occurrence of complex exchange.     

Beggar thy thrifty neighbour

This paper explores the international spillover effects of ageing through capital markets when countries have different pension systems. We use a two-country two-period overlapping-generations model, where the two countries only differ in their pension schemes. Two forms of population ageing are considered, namely, an increase in longevity and a fall in fertility. It is shown that, in the long run, a country using a funded pension system experiences negative spillovers from the fact that the other country uses a pay-as-you-go system. The short-run spillovers, however, are opposite to the spillovers in the long run.      

Transfers to the old,government debt and demographic change

In this paper we take the view that policy makers (representing the interests of the living generations in one way or another) take the relationship between (explicit) intergenerational transfer systems (including public pension schemes) and government deficits into account. It is assumed that policy makers are behaving altruistically towards past and future generations. Given the behavioral model, an analysis is made of the effects of demographic changes (such as the baby-boom of the 1940s and 1950s and the decline of birth rates in the 1970s) on the decisions to be taken with respect to the tax rate of the public pension system and the size of government debt. From the analysis it appears that, with the assumption of altruistic decision-makers, periods of increasing or decreasing debt can occur alternately in periods of demographic change.