Social security privatization: what it can and cannot accomplish

This paper assesses the effect of social security privatization on the government budget, economic efficiency, national savings, and the distribution of resources across generations. It is shown that the benefits of privatization most often touted by privatization advocates can be achieved by simply altering taxes and social security pensions and leaving the basic structure of social security unchanged. In the conclusion, two simple arguments are given for why privatization might be a good idea nonetheless.Social security ; Privatization

A Life-cycle Consumption Model with Liquidity Contraints: Theory and Empirical Results.

A structural consumption model incorporating endogenous liquidity constraints is fit to a cross section of 798 U.S. families. Liquidity constrained families are estimated to constitute 19.4 percent of the population sampled, a group that accounts for 16.7 percent of consumption in the population sampled. In-sample simulations of the model suggest that a temporary tax has three to four times more impact on aggregate consumption than it would if liquidity constraints were not in effect. Copyright 1987 by The Econometric Society.

SOCIAL SECURITY PRIVATIZATION: WHAT IT CAN AND CANNOT ACCOMPLISH by

This paper assesses the effect of social security privatization on the government budget, economic efficiency, national saving, and the distribution of resources across generations. It is shown that the benefits of privatization most often touted by privatization advocates can be achieved by simply altering taxes and social security pensions, and leaving the basic structure of social security unchanged. In the conclusion, two simple arguments are given for why privatization might be a good idea nonetheless. The analysis and conclusions set forth in this paper are those of the author and do not indicate concurrence by other members of the research staffs, by the Board o

Unanticipated Aggregate Disturbances and Tests of the Life-Cycle Consumption Model Using Panel Data.

Several recent studies have used data on food consumption from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to test t he rational expectations life-cycle hypothesis against the alternative of prevalent liquidity constraints. These tests invoke the rational expectations restriction that income forecast errors are independent of lagged information. This restriction, however, applies only in a time-series context. It is possible that unanticipated macroeconomic disturbances cause forecast errors to be correlated.with lagged information in a cross-section of families. The authors present evidence of such a correlation in the PSID data, show that this correlation biases previous tests of the life-cycle model toward rejection, and derive a proper test of the life-cycle model using pa nel data. Copyright 1993 by MIT Press.