Econometrica

Journal Of The Econometric Society

An International Society for the Advancement of Economic
Theory in its Relation to Statistics and Mathematics

Edited by: Guido W. Imbens • Print ISSN: 0012-9682 • Online ISSN: 1468-0262

Econometrica: May, 1999, Volume 67, Issue 3

Social Security and Demographic Shocks

https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0262.00035
p. 527-542

Gabrielle Demange, Guy Laroque

An overlapping generations model of social security with shocks to the productivity of labor and capital and demographic shocks is studied. We focus attention on stationary long run allocations. An allocation is if there does not exist another feasible allocation that improves the expected welfare of all generations, computed conditionally on the state of the world when they are born. We characterize the set of interim optimal allocations and study the equilibria associated with various institutional forms of social security from the point of view of this optimality criterion. We obtain the analogs of the two traditional welfare theorems of microeconomic theory. Assume that there exists a financial asset in fixed quantity, which supports some (non null) intergenerational transfers. Then the rational expectations equilibrium allocation of this economy is interim optimal. Conversely, any stationary interim optimal allocation can be supported by such an equilibrium, with adequate lump sum transfers.


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