IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osk/wpaper/0702.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Risk Sharing and Growth in the Gifts Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Atsue Mizushima

    (Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University)

  • Keiichi Koda

    (International Graduate School of Social Science Graduate School of Economics, Yokohama National University)

Abstract

We consider a two-period overlapping generations model where agents face the uncertainty of intergenerational transfers from their children. To avoid this kind of risk, agents have an incentive to share the risk within the same generation. However, there exists an information asymmetry about the realization of the old period fs income between the insurance company and old agents. By analyzing economies with and without risk sharing, we find that risk sharing decreases the rate of economic growth and accelerates social welfare when the rate of social time preference is sufficiently large.

Suggested Citation

  • Atsue Mizushima & Keiichi Koda, 2007. "Risk Sharing and Growth in the Gifts Economy," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 07-02, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:osk:wpaper:0702
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www2.econ.osaka-u.ac.jp/library/global/dp/0702.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Romer, Paul M, 1986. "Increasing Returns and Long-run Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(5), pages 1002-1037, October.
    2. Kimball, Miles S, 1990. "Precautionary Saving in the Small and in the Large," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 53-73, January.
    3. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    4. Hayne E. Leland, 1968. "Saving and Uncertainty: The Precautionary Demand for Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(3), pages 465-473.
    5. Joydeep Bhattacharya, 1997. "Credit market imperfections, income distribution, and capital accumulation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 11(1), pages 171-200.
    6. Barro, Robert J & Becker, Gary S, 1989. "Fertility Choice in a Model of Economic Growth," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 481-501, March.
    7. O'Connell, Stephen A. & Zeldes, Stephen P., 1993. "Dynamic efficiency in the gifts economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 363-379, June.
    8. Gary S. Becker & Robert J. Barro, 1988. "A Reformulation of the Economic Theory of Fertility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(1), pages 1-25.
    9. Morand, Olivier F, 1999. "Endogenous Fertility, Income Distribution, and Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 331-349, September.
    10. Blackburn, Keith & Cipriani, Giam Pietro, 2005. "Intergenerational transfers and demographic transition," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 191-214, October.
    11. Wigger, Berthold U., 2001. "Gifts, Bequests, and Growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 121-129, January.
    12. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark, 1989. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 14-31, March.
    13. A. Sandmo, 1970. "The Effect of Uncertainty on Saving Decisions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 37(3), pages 353-360.
    14. Williamson, Stephen D., 1986. "Costly monitoring, financial intermediation, and equilibrium credit rationing," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 159-179, September.
    15. B. Douglas Bernheim & Debraj Ray, 1987. "Economic Growth with Intergenerational Altruism," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(2), pages 227-243.
    16. Cox, Donald, 1987. "Motives for Private Income Transfers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(3), pages 508-546, June.
    17. Dirk Krueger & Felix Kubler, 2002. "Intergenerational Risk-Sharing via Social Security when Financial Markets Are Incomplete," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 407-410, May.
    18. Townsend, Robert M., 1979. "Optimal contracts and competitive markets with costly state verification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 265-293, October.
    19. Abel, Andrew B, 1985. "Precautionary Saving and Accidental Bequests," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 777-791, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Blackburn, Keith & Cipriani, Giam Pietro, 2005. "Intergenerational transfers and demographic transition," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 191-214, October.
    2. Mizushima, Atsue, 2009. "Intergenerational transfers of time and public long-term care with an aging population," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 572-581, December.
    3. Luciano Fanti & Luca Gori, 2012. "Public Expenditure on Health and Private Old-Age Insurance in an OLG Growth Model with Endogenous Fertility: Chaotic Dynamics Under Perfect Foresight," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 40(4), pages 333-353, December.
    4. Robinson, James A. & Srinivasan, T.N., 1993. "Long-term consequences of population growth: Technological change, natural resources, and the environment," Handbook of Population and Family Economics, in: M. R. Rosenzweig & Stark, O. (ed.), Handbook of Population and Family Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1175-1298, Elsevier.
    5. Wai‐Hong Ho & Yong Wang, 2013. "Asymmetric Information, Auditing Commitment, and Economic Growth," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(2), pages 611-633, May.
    6. S. Rao Aiyagari, 1994. "Macroeconomics with frictions," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 18(Sum), pages 24-40.
    7. Aoki Takaaki, 2011. "On the Implications of Two-Sided Altruism in Human Capital Based OLG Model," Asian Journal of Law and Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(2), pages 1-40, July.
    8. Asako Ohinata & Matteo Picchio, 2020. "Financial support for long-term elderly care and household saving behaviour," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 72(1), pages 247-268.
    9. Cigno, A., 2016. "Conflict and Cooperation Within the Family, and Between the State and the Family, in the Provision of Old-Age Security," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 609-660, Elsevier.
    10. Angeletos, George-Marios & Calvet, Laurent-Emmanuel, 2006. "Idiosyncratic production risk, growth and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 1095-1115, September.
    11. Atreya Chakraborty & Mark Kazarosian, 1999. "Portfolio Allocation of Precautionary Assets: Panel Evidence for the United States," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 432, Boston College Department of Economics.
    12. Bullard, James & Russell, Steven, 1999. "An empirically plausible model of low real interest rates and unbacked government debt," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 477-508, December.
    13. Skinner, Jonathan, 1988. "Risky income, life cycle consumption, and precautionary savings," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 237-255, September.
    14. Marco Magnani, 2020. "Precautionary retirement and precautionary saving," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 49-77, January.
    15. Becker, Torbjörn, 1995. "Budget Deficits, Tax Risk and Consumption," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 74, Stockholm School of Economics.
    16. Donatella Baiardi & Marco Magnani & Mario Menegatti, 2020. "The theory of precautionary saving: an overview of recent developments," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 513-542, June.
    17. Kotaro Tsuru, 2000. "Finance and Growth: Some Theoretical Considerations and a Review of the Empirical Literature," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 228, OECD Publishing.
    18. Zhang, Junsen & Zhang, Jie & Lee, Ronald, 2001. "Mortality decline and long-run economic growth," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 485-507, June.
    19. Lothar Essig, 2005. "Precautionary saving and old-age provisions: Do subjective saving motive measures work?," MEA discussion paper series 05084, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
    20. Becker, Torbjörn, 1995. "Budget Deficits, Stochastic Population Size and Consumption," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 75, Stockholm School of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    gifts economy; risk sharing; information asymmetry; economic growth; overlapping generations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osk:wpaper:0702. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The Economic Society of Osaka University (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feosujp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.