How To Pool Risks Across Generations

How to Pool Risks across Generations makes the case for the collective provision of pensions, on fair terms of social cooperation. Through the insurance of a mutual association which extends across society and over multiple generations, we share one another's fates by pooling risks across both space and time.

How to Pool Risks across Generations makes the case for the collective provision of pensions, on fair terms of social cooperation. Through the insurance of a mutual association which extends across society and over multiple generations, we share one another's fates by pooling risks across both space and time. Resources are transferred, not simply between different people, but also within the possible future lives of each person: from one's more fortunate to one's less fortunate future selves. The book opens with an investigation of the longevity and investment risk that even a single individual on a desert island would face in providing for her old age. From this atomistic starting point, it builds up, within and across the chapters, to increasingly collective forms of pension provision. By joining together, it is possible to tame the risks we would face as individuals each with our own private pension pot. A collective pension can be justified as a 'social union of social unions': an enduring corporate body, which is formed by agreements to pool risks, in a manner that involves reciprocity between the various individuals that constitute the collective. Even though all individuals age and die, a collective pension scheme remains evergreen, as the average age of members remains relatively unchanged, through the influx of new members to replace those who retire. It is therefore possible to smooth risks indefinitely across as well as within generations, to the mutual advantage of each.

This text by Alan Auerbach and Laurence Kotlikoff uses a single analytic framework--the two-period life-cycle model--to explore and connect each of the major issues in contemporary macroeconomics.

The topical issues debated in this volume include the patenting of AIDS drugs, the future pensions crisis, Britain's universities, and Pan-Islam.There are studies of Shakespeare, Pope, Montaigne, Robert Graves, and William Faulkner. And there are lectures on the Inquisition, empires in history, and the journey towards spiritual fulfilment.

This primer on Social Security describes the elements of the program that are most relevant to the current debate about Social Security's future. It examines the demographic patterns that are causing the graying of the U.S. population and looks at several strategies that have been proposed for preparing for that aging population. The primer emphasizes the economic and budgetary aspects of Social Security -- particularly, how changes to the program might affect the nation's ability to deal with its impending demographic shift. Appendices: the economic effects of having the government issue debt to finance investments in the stock market; and proposals for private accounts in the 106th Congress.

In this volume, economists discuss the long-run consequences of aging societies. Using theoretical economic models, long-term projections and simulations, and econometric analysis, answers to the following questions are given: What are the economic consequences for consumption patterns, the supply of labor, capital accumulation, productivity, and the international flow of capital? Where are the political consequences for pension systems, health care and immigration policy? And what changes in politics are needed to handle the issues of populations that age markedly?

How generational policy affects the sustainability of a government's fiscal policy. In these eight 2002 Cairoli Lectures, presented at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Laurence Kotlikoff shows how generational policy works, how it is measured, and how much it matters. Kotlikoff discusses the incidence and measurement of generational policy, the relationship of generational policy to monetary policy, and the vacuity of deficits, taxes, and transfer payments as economic measures of fiscal policy. Kotlikoff also illustrates generational policy's general equilibrium effects with a dynamic life-cycle simulation model and reviews the empirical evidence testing intergenerational altruism and risk sharing. The lectures were delivered as Argentina faced a devastating depression triggered, in large part, by unsustainable generational policy. Throughout the book, Kotlikoff connects his messages about generational policy to the Argentine situation and the Argentine government's policy mistakes.