Mitigating Demographic Risk Through Social Insurance

A two-period lifetime overlapping generations growth model is used to evaluate the possibility that social insurance can effectively offset economic risks associated with uncertainty about the rate of population growth. Crude measures of the seriousness of this type of risk in the current United States situation are presented. Sufficient conditions on the structure of the economy for such intergenerational risk pooling to be mutually beneficial to all members of society are derived. Although it is logically possible to satisfy them1 we argue that they are unlikely to be realized empirically in an economy similar to that of the United States. Because of this failure, some more complex types of policy options are also discussed.

Compensatory Transfers in Two-Player Decision Problems

This paper presents an axiomatic characterization of a family of solutions to two-player quasi-linear social choice problems. In these problems the players select a single action from a set available to them. They may also transfer money between themselves. The solutions form a one-parameter family, where the parameter is a nonnegative number, t. The solutions can be interpreted as follows: Any efficient action can be selected. Based on this action, compute for each player a "best claim for compensation". A claim for compensation is the difference between the value of an alternative action and the selected efficient action, minus a penalty proportional to the extent to which the alternative action is inefficient. The coefficient of proportionality of this penalty is t. The best claim for compensation for a player is the maximum of this computed claim over all possible alternative actions. The solution, at the parameter value t, is to implement the chosen efficient action and make a monetary transfer equal to the average of these two best claims. The characterization relies on three main axioms. The paper presents and justifies these axioms and compares them to related conditions used in other bargaining contexts. In Nash Bargaining Theory, the axioms analagous to these three are in conflict with each other. In contrast, in the quasi-linear social choice setting of this paper, all three conditions can be satisfied simultaneously.

Taxation and the Ex-Dividend Day Behavior of Common Stock Prices

The behavior of stock prices around ex-dividend days has been suggested as evidence for tax-induced clientele effects and as a means to estimate the average effective tax rate faced by investors. In this paper these possibilities are examined theoretically and empirically. Theoretically it is shown that the measured price drop per dollar of dividend may provide a biased estimate of the effective tax rate. Looking at the volume of trade around ex-dividend days we show that the conditions under which it would be unbiased are unlikely to hold. Strong evidence, based on a broader database than that used by previous investigators, is presented for the presence of the clientele effect.

Notes on the Public Debt and Social Insurance

In these notes I hope to touch on a variety of issues relating to public debt and social insurance and to suggest ways in which they might be approached. It is to be viewed as a research proposal, or an outline of open problems rather than as a statement of results. The notes are divided into two sections. In the first, problems of intertemporal reallocation of resources through the public debt and social security are treated in the context of complete certainty about future events. Both positive and normative aspects of the problem are investigated, but principle emphasis is given to the latter. In the second section, the set of issues related to uncertainty and the role of intergenerational social insurance in its mitigation are explored.

Bilateral Contracts

The basic form of economic exchange is a bilateral relationship between buyer and seller. If economic conditions are common knowledge there is no problem in principle to determine the efficient quantity to trade. But if benefits are known only to the buyer and costs are known only to the seller a situation of bargaining under incomplete information results. Instead of relying on the vagaries of a bargaining outcome, which might be quite costly to implement, economic inefficiency is likely to be improved by a contractual arrangement that could be agreed upon in advance. In such contracts various aspects of the exchange could be allocated to the two parties involved. For example, a price per unit might be fixed in advance and the buyer might be allowed to name his quantity in the light of the information he has about benefits. A more complex version would present the buyer with a non-linear price schedule. Alternatively the supplies might be given control. While these solutions are fairly well understood, there are other types of arrangements in which control is mutual. This paper studies contracts of this nature. We examine the feasibility of implementing various agreements and the nature of optimal bilateral contracts under these informational circumstances. When the random influences impact both parties significantly, full efficiency is not attainable. We show that contracts involving mutual control might sometimes be superior to the best contract giving one side or the other exclusive dominance.

Disequilibrium Dynamics with Inventories and Anticipatory Price-Setting:Some Impirical Results

The basic assumption of this paper is an attempt to be specific about price formation while retaining a fixed-price, quantity-constrained equilibration in the short-run. The second theme of this paper is the role of inventories in macrodynamics a topic of long-recognized importance, but one which has not received much attention within the disequilibrium literature. We will analyze how the level of inventories interacts with the level of prices and wages, and how the spillover effects in a fixed-price equilibrium produce certain testable characteristics in macro time series data. We will argue that these can be used to discriminate between a model of the type we study and the analogous flexible-price system. In section 2 we set out the basic model and discuss its assumptions. Section 3 derives the short-run quantity-constrained equilibrium as it depends on initial inventory stocks and on the random disturbances within the period. Section 4 presents, for comparison purposes, the analogous results under conditions of full price flexibility after these shocks are realized. Sections 5 and 6 are the heart of the paper. We first derive the probabilistic nature of the equilibrium as it depends upon the underlying stochastic disturbances. The probabilities of different types of quantity constrained equilibria can be compared. Then, we use these results to present the dynamics of inventory behavior and the statistical relationships between real wages, inventories and employment. We emphasize the possibility of using this type of analysis to test the disequilibrium hypothesis with anticipatory pricing, against the market-clearing assumptions.

Wage-Employment Contracts: Global Results

This paper studies the efficient agreements about the dependence of workers' earnings on employment, when the employment level is controlled by firms. The firms ' superior information about profitability conditions is responsible for this form of contract governance. Under plausible assumptions, such agreements will cause employment to diverge from efficiency as a byproduct of their attempt to mitigate risk. It is shown that, if leisure is a normal good and firms are risk neutral, employment is always above the efficient level. Such a one-period implicit contracting model cannot, therefore, be used to "explain" unemployment as a rational byproduct of risk sharing between workers and a risk neutral firm under conditions of asymmetric information.