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On the role of labor supply for the optimal size of Social Security

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  • Hillebrand, Marten

Abstract

The paper studies the welfare effects of a Social Security system in a stylized overlapping generations economy with random production and capital accumulation. Different welfare concepts including long run optimality, social optimality, and time consistency are employed to determine the optimal size of the system. When labor supply is exogenous, a unique contribution level can be identified which is optimal according to all three concepts. When labor supply is endogenous, however, this result generically fails to hold and the long-run optimal solution is only constrained socially optimal while the time-consistent policy may even lead to an inefficient equilibrium.

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  • Hillebrand, Marten, 2011. "On the role of labor supply for the optimal size of Social Security," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 1091-1105, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:35:y:2011:i:7:p:1091-1105
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Hillebrand, Marten, 2012. "On the optimal size of Social Security in the presence of a stock market," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 26-38.
    2. Martin Barbie & Marten Hillebrand, 2018. "Bubbly Markov equilibria," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 66(3), pages 627-679, October.

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