The paper supposes, consistent with law, that single or married Social Security beneficiaries view an initiation or postponement decision in terms of a sequential decision process rather than in terms of a single evaluation made at or before the normal retirement age. The question asked at each age, according to the sequential approach introduced in this paper, is not whether to initiate now or...

In the discussion about demographic change, the regional dimension so far has played a subordinate role. Based on municipal data for the period between 1998 and 2008, this paper examines to what extent recent demographic change has aff ected the population of cities and neighbourhoods, focusing on the largest urban agglomeration in Germany, the Rhine-Ruhr conurbation in North Rhine-Westphalia. ...

The present paper compares the distributional and risk-sharing consequences of two pension reform proposals in Germany which both aim to improve the sustainability of the current system by introducing demographic variables to the benefit calculation. While the first reform proposes a so-called ” sustainability factor“ which measures the changes in the dependency ratio, the second reform propose...

In China, many fewer girls are born than would be expected given natural birth rates. This imbalance has worsened dramatically over the last 40 years. The roughly contemporaneous fall in fertility per woman is often mooted as a source of this apparent increased demand for sex selection: fewer births make it harder to have a son by chance. Despite this, causal evidence is limited. This paper exp...

We examine the dynamic interaction of the population age structure, economic dependency, and fertility, paying particular attention to the role of intergenerational transfers. In the short run, a reduction in fertility produces a “demographic dividend” that allows for higher consumption. In the long run, however, higher old-age dependency can more than offset this effect. To analyze these dynam...

Motivated by high and rising sex ratios in countries such as India and China, we formulate a theoretical framework for analyzing the impact of economic development on parental sex choice when sons are culturally prized and children provide old age support. Two key assumptions drive our model. First, the cultural valuation of children vary not only with gender but also with marital status. In pa...

CCK is predominantly expressed in subsets of endocrine cells in the intestine and neurons in the brain. We evaluated the expression of a CCK gene construct in transgenic mice and cultured cells to identify a genomic region that directs correct tissue- and cell-specific expression in enteroendocrine cells. The CCKL1 transgene contained 6.4 kb of mouse Cck fused to lacZ. Expression was evaluated ...

In this paper we analyze the implications of demographic shift for an economy’s fiscal sustainability through lens of fiscal space. We formulate a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium, overlapping generations model to measure fiscal space in terms of budgetary room between the current and maximum tax revenues (the peaks of Laffer curves). We calibrate the model to Japan and US data and conduc...

The history of fluctuation relations may be traced back to the late seventies/early eighties papers by Bochkov-Kuzovlev [BK77, BK79, BK81] that were not remarked at the time. In the next development, in 1993 Evans-Cohen-Morriss observed in [ECM93] a symmetry in the distribution of fluctuations of microscopic pressure in a thermostatted particle system driven by external shear. Attempts to expla...

This paper analyzes Singapore’s multi-pronged approach to managing prolonged low fertility which has led to population aging, labor force shortages, increasing elderly dependency ratios, and feminization of the elderly population. This approach has emphasized high growth, and has given priority to becoming an attractive business location over providing adequate and equitable retirement and heal...