Sindbis virus (SV) is an alphavirus that causes encephalitis in mice and results in age-dependent mortality. The outcome is dependent on the virus strain. Residues at 55 and 172 in the E2 glycoprotein determine the neurovirulence for mice of different ages and the efficiency of replication in the nervous system and neuronal cells. To determine the effects of these two residues on the initial st...

Fostering Within-Family Human Capital Investment: An Intragenerational Insurance Perspective of Social Security We develop a general equilibrium stochastic OLG model with heterogenous households. Households differ with respect to their productivity. Productivity depends stochastically on parents' unobservable investment in their child's human capital and an aggregate productivity shock. We intr...

Preferences for Redistribution and Pensions: What Can We Learn from Experiments? Redistribution is an inevitable feature of collective pension schemes and economic experiments have revealed that most people have a preference for redistribution that is not merely inspired by self-interest. Interestingly, little is known on how these preferences interact with preferences for different pension sch...

This paper studies optimal income taxes and retirement benefits in a life-cycle model with an intensive margin of labor supply and an endogenous retirement age. The government insures and redistributes resources across individuals who privately observe persistent shocks to their productivity. In this environment, the optimal labor tax is hump-shaped in age, unlike in existing models with no end...

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 bequ...

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. Using available data on the distribution of HIV/AIDS prevalen...

This policy paper summarizes four corridor studies on bilateral social security agreements (BSSAs) between four European Union (EU) member and two nonmember states, draws conclusions on their results, and offers recommendations. BSSAs between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries are seen as the most important instrument to establish portability of social security benefits for interna...

This paper analyses the e¤ects of reducing unfunded social security and population ageing on economic growth and welfare, both for a small open economy and for a closed economy. The economy consists of a service sector and a commodity sector. Productivity growth only occurs in the latter sector and is assumed to depend positively on its size. It is shown that if old agents mainly demand labour ...

This paper studies the determination through majority voting of a pension scheme when society consists of far-sighted and myopic individuals. All individuals have the same basic preferences but myopics tend to adopt a short term view (instant grati…cation) when dealing with retirement saving and labor supply. Consequently, they will …nd themselves with low consumption after retirement and regre...

This paper provides a unified treatment of externalities associated with fertility and human capital accumulation as they relate to pension systems. It considers as overlapping generations model in which every generation consists of high earners and low earners with the proportion of types being determined endogenously. The number of children is deterministically chosen but the children’s futur...