This paper takes a global, long‐run perspective on the recent debate about secular stagnation, which has so far mainly focused on the short term. The analysis is motivated by observing the interplay between the economic and demographic transition that has occurred in the developed world over the past 150 years. To the extent that high growth rates in the past have partly been the consequence of...

The People’s Republic of China conducted its fifth population census in November 2000. This paper draws from that census and recent data to examine national and regional demographic changes in China over the past two decades. Nationally, the impact of fertility decline on rates of population growth, age composition, and household size is investigated. Regional population trends include the risi...

Gerontocracy in Motion? European Cross-Country Evidence on the Labor Market Consequences of Population Ageing Taking a European cross-country perspective, this paper addresses the most important issues in the nexus of population ageing and labor markets. We start from a descriptive overview of the demographic change currently shaping European societies. The subsequent section intensively discus...

Downloading Wisdom from Online Crowds The internet and other large textual databases contain billions of documents: is there useful information in the number of documents written about different topics? We propose, based on the premise that the occurrence of a phenomenon increases the likelihood that people write about it, that the relative frequency of documents discussing a phenomenon can be ...

This paper is primarily concerned with the impacts of population aging upon education and skill premium. To study population aging, we utilize an overlappinggeneration model where survival into the old stage is uncertain and population aging is modelled via a higher survival rate. Featuring the household, education and production sectors, our model is analysed under both autarky and two-country...

The internet contains billions of documents. We study if there is useful information in the frequency with which different topics are written about. Based on the premise that the occurrence of an event increases its textual frequency, we assess whether internet document-frequency can capture cross-sectional variation in the occurrence-frequency of social phenomena. We characterize the condition...

In this note, we examine the so-called “natural hedging” approach for life insurers to internally manage their longevity risk exposure by adjusting their insurance portfolio. In particular, unlike the existing literature, we also consider a non-parametric mortality forecasting model that averts the assumption that all mortality rates are driven by the same factor(s). Our primary finding is that...

We analyze the differential growth effects of basic research, applied research, and embodied human capital accumulation in an R&D-based growth model with endogenous fertility and endogenous education. In line with the empirical evidence, our model allows for i) a negative association between long-run economic growth and population growth, ii) a positive association between long-run economic gro...

The Economic Security Index: A New Measure for Research and Policy Analysis This paper presents the Economic Security Index (ESI), a new, more comprehensive measure of economic insecurity. By combining data from multiple surveys, we create an integrated measure of volatility in available household resources, accounting for fluctuations in income and out-of-pocket medical expenses, as well as fi...

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. The present paper reviews key issues in pension design and pe...