Search Results
Journal Article
Is the United States bankrupt?
Is the United States bankrupt? Many would scoff at this notion. Others would argue that financial implosion is just around the corner. This paper explores these views from both partial and general equilibrium perspectives. It concludes that countries can go broke, that the United States is going broke, that remaining open to foreign investment can help stave off bankruptcy, but that radical reform of U.S. fiscal institutions is essential to secure the nation's economic future. The paper offers three policies to eliminate the nation's enormous fiscal gap and avert bankruptcy: a retail sales ...
Working Paper
Gains from trade under uncertainty, once again
Journal Article
Assessing fundamental tax reform
A look at how some basic tax reform proposals stack up against four, sometimes competing, requirements laid out by President Clinton in a December 1997 speech: Is the proposal fiscally responsible? Will it be good for the economy? Will it lead to a simpler tax system? And finally, is it fair to all Americans?
Working Paper
Understanding the postwar decline in United States saving: a cohort analysis
An analysis of the postwar decline in U.S. national saving that decomposes changes in the net national saving rate into those due to changes in cohort-specific consumption propensities, the intergenerational distribution of resources, the rate of government spending, and demographics. ; A review and expansion of Calomiris, Kahn, and Longhofer's (1994) cultural affinity theory of discrimination in the residential mortgage market, which is based on the idea that lenders find it easier or less costly to evaluate the creditworthiness of applicants with whom they have a common experiential ...
Working Paper
The adequacy of life insurance: evidence from the health and retirement survey
This study examines life insurance adequacy among married American couples approaching retirement based on the 1992 Health and Retirement Survey with matched Social Security earnings histories. It evaluates each household's life insurance needs based on new financial planning software that embodies a life-cycle-planning model and covers a broad array of demographic, economic, and financial characteristics. A sizable minority of households are significantly underinsured. Almost one third of wives and over 10 percent of husbands would have suffered living-standard reductions greater than 20 ...
Working Paper
Does it pay to work?
Does it pay to work? This is a tough question because of the complexity of the tax code and the plethora of dynamic linkages involved: 1) Earning more today typically alters current saving and, therefore, future capital income taxes. 2) Earning more today generally alters future consumption and, therefore, future consumption taxes. 3) Changing future levels of income and assets changes the eligibility for and levels received of income- and asset-tested transfer benefits. 4) The most important transfer program, Social Security, explicitly links future transfer payments to current earnings. 5) ...
Working Paper
The equity of social services provided to children and senior citizens
A consideration of the degree of equity in the U.S. government's treatment of children vis-a-vis adults, particularly the elderly. The authors show that given current policy, today's and tomorrow's children could end up paying as much as 70 percent of their lifetime income to the government, whereas the current elderly will pay only about 25 percent on average.
Working Paper
The impact of Social Security and other factors on the distribution of wealth
Auerbach et al. (1995), document the dramatic postwar increase in the annuitization of the resources of America?s elderly. Gokhale et al. (1996) suggest that greater annuitization may explain the significant postwar rise in the consumption propensity of the elderly out of remaining lifetime resources. Gokhale et al. (2000) consider the related point that increased annuitization will reduce bequests, especially for lower and middle-income households, whose entire earnings are taxed under Social Security. By differentially disenfranchising the children of the poor from receipt of inheritances, ...
Journal Article
Generational accounts: a new approach to fiscal policy evaluation
A discussion of why budget deficits are inadequate measures of the long-run effect of fiscal policy on intergenerational redistributi- on, and an assertion that policy evaluation would be better served by looking at generational accounts.
Working Paper
Generational accounting in Norway: is the nation overconsuming its petroleum wealth?
An examination of the generational imbalance in current Norwegian fiscal policy, showing that despite the government's net wealth, future Norwegians could be facing lifetime net tax burdens twice as large as those confronting today's children.