[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eth/wpswif/10-128.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trading Off Generations: Infinitely-Lived Agent Versus OLG

Author

Abstract
The prevailing literature discusses intergenerational trade-offs predominantly in infinitely-lived agent models despite the finite lifetime of individuals. We discuss these trade-offs in a continuous time OLG framework and relate the results to the infinitely-lived agent setting. We identify three shortcomings of the latter: First, underlying normative assumptions about social preferences cannot be deduced unambiguously. Second, the distribution among generations living at the same time cannot be captured. Third, the optimal solution may not be implementable in overlapping generations market economies. Regarding the recent debate on climate change, we conclude that it is indispensable to explicitly consider the generations' life cycles.

Suggested Citation

  • Maik T. Schneider & Christian Traeger & Ralph Winkler, 2010. "Trading Off Generations: Infinitely-Lived Agent Versus OLG," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 10/128, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:eth:wpswif:10-128
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/WP-10-128.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Asheim, Geir B. & Mitra, Tapan, 2010. "Sustainability and discounted utilitarianism in models of economic growth," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 148-169, March.
    2. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
    3. Richard Howarth, 2000. "Climate Change and the Representative Agent," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 15(2), pages 135-148, February.
    4. Epstein, Larry G & Zin, Stanley E, 1991. "Substitution, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Consumption and Asset Returns: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 263-286, April.
    5. Campbell, John Y, 1996. "Understanding Risk and Return," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(2), pages 298-345, April.
    6. Rao Aiyagari, S., 1985. "Observational equivalence of the overlapping generations and the discounted dynamic programming frameworks for one-sector growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 201-221, August.
    7. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    8. d'Albis, Hippolyte, 2007. "Demographic structure and capital accumulation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 411-434, January.
    9. Wojciech Kopczuk & Joseph P. Lupton, 2007. "To Leave or Not to Leave: The Distribution of Bequest Motives," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(1), pages 207-235.
    10. Hurd, Michael D, 1989. "Mortality Risk and Bequests," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(4), pages 779-813, July.
    11. Gan, Zhuojiong & Lau, Sau-Him Paul, 2010. "Demographic structure and overlapping generations: A simpler proof with more general conditions," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 311-319, May.
    12. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801, September.
    13. Laitner, John & Juster, F Thomas, 1996. "New Evidence on Altruism: A Study of TIAA-CREF Retirees," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 893-908, September.
    14. R. M. Solow, 1974. "Intergenerational Equity and Exhaustible Resources," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(5), pages 29-45.
    15. Marini Giancarlo & Scaramozzino Pasquale, 1995. "Overlapping Generations and Environmental Control," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 64-77, July.
    16. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1985. "Debt, Deficits, and Finite Horizons," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 223-247, April.
    17. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1481-1509 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Wilhelm, Mark O, 1996. "Bequest Behavior and the Effect of Heirs' Earnings: Testing the Altruistic Model of Bequests," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 874-892, September.
    19. Laitner, John & Ohlsson, Henry, 2001. "Bequest motives: a comparison of Sweden and the United States," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 205-236, January.
    20. Hurd, Michael D, 1987. "Savings of the Elderly and Desired Bequests," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 298-312, June.
    21. William R. Cline, 1992. "Economics of Global Warming, The," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 39, April.
    22. GUNTER Stephan & GEORG MÜLLER-FÜRSTENBERGER & PASCAL Previdoli, 1997. "Overlapping Generations or Infinitely-Lived Agents: Intergenerational Altruism and the Economics of Global Warming," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 10(1), pages 27-40, July.
    23. Menahem E. Yaari, 1965. "Uncertain Lifetime, Life Insurance, and the Theory of the Consumer," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 32(2), pages 137-150.
    24. Christoph Heinzel & Ralph Winkler, 2011. "Distorted Time Preferences and Time-to-Build in the Transition to a Low-Carbon Energy Industry," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 49(2), pages 217-241, June.
    25. Burton Peter S., 1993. "Intertemporal Preferences and Intergenerational Equity Considerations in Optimal Resource Harvesting," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 119-132, March.
    26. repec:bla:scandj:v:100:y:1998:i:3:p:575-91 is not listed on IDEAS
    27. William D. Nordhaus, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 686-702, September.
    28. Annette Vissing-Jørgensen & Orazio P. Attanasio, 2003. "Stock-Market Participation, Intertemporal Substitution, and Risk-Aversion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 383-391, May.
    29. Martin L. Weitzman, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 703-724, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Trading Off Generations: Infinitely-Lived Agent Versus OLG
      by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2010-06-07 07:25:03
    2. Trading Off Generations: Infinitely-Lived Agent Versus OLG
      by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2010-05-04 05:46:22

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Catalano, Michele & Forni, Lorenzo & Pezzolla, Emilia, 2020. "Climate-change adaptation: The role of fiscal policy," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    2. Habla, Wolfgang & Roeder, Kerstin, 2017. "The political economy of mitigation and adaptation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 239-257.
    3. Traeger, Christian, 2021. "ACE - Analytic Climate Economy," CEPR Discussion Papers 15968, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Roeder, Kerstin & Habla, Wolfgang, 2012. "The Political Sustainability of Germany's Environmental Tax Rate," VfS Annual Conference 2012 (Goettingen): New Approaches and Challenges for the Labor Market of the 21st Century 62060, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Voyvoda, Ebru, 2013. "Energy-Economy-Environment Interaction Using OLG Framework: Evaluation of Alternative Policies under Demographic Transition," Conference papers 332376, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    6. Habla, Wolfgang & Roeder, Kerstin, 2013. "Intergenerational aspects of ecotax reforms – An application to Germany," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 301-318.
    7. Ekeland, Ivar & Karp, Larry & Sumaila, Rashid, 2015. "Equilibrium resource management with altruistic overlapping generations," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 1-16.
    8. Larry S. Karp, 2012. "Provision of a Public Good with Altruistic Overlapping Generations and Many Tribes," CESifo Working Paper Series 3895, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schneider, Maik T. & Traeger, Christian P. & Winkler, Ralph, 2012. "Trading off generations: Equity, discounting, and climate change," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1621-1644.
    2. Marta Melguizo Garde, 2007. "La motivación de las transmisiones lucrativas entre generaciones de una familia: modelos teóricos y evidencia empírica," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 181(2), pages 81-118, June.
    3. Rajnish Mehra & Facundo Piguillem & Edward C. Prescott, 2011. "Costly financial intermediation in neoclassical growth theory," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(1), pages 1-36, March.
    4. Camacho, Carmen & Harmankaya, Fatih & Sağlam, Çağrı, 2020. "Social status pursuit, distribution of bequests and inequality," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 183-191.
    5. Endress, Lee H. & Pongkijvorasin, Sittidaj & Roumasset, James & Wada, Christopher A., 2014. "Intergenerational equity with individual impatience in a model of optimal and sustainable growth," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 620-635.
    6. Lee H. Endress & Sittidaj Pongkijvorasin & James Roumasset & Christopher Wada, 2013. "Intergenerational Equity with Individual Impatience in an OLG Model of Optimal and Sustainable Growth," Working Papers 2013-9, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
    7. Rajnish Mehra & Facundo Piguillem & Edward C. Prescott, 2007. "Intermediated quantities and returns," Working Papers 655, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    8. Stefan Hochguertel & Henry Ohlsson, 2009. "Compensatory inter vivos gifts," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(6), pages 993-1023.
    9. Arrondel, Luc & Masson, Andre, 2006. "Altruism, exchange or indirect reciprocity: what do the data on family transfers show?," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 971-1053, Elsevier.
    10. Christian Traeger, 2014. "Why uncertainty matters: discounting under intertemporal risk aversion and ambiguity," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(3), pages 627-664, August.
    11. John Laitner & Amanda Sonnega, 2010. "Intergenerational Transfers in the Health and Retirement Study Data," Working Papers wp238, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    12. Charles Yuji Horioka, 2002. "Are the Japanese Selfish, Altruistic or Dynastic?," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 53(1), pages 26-54, March.
    13. Bullard, James & Russell, Steven, 1999. "An empirically plausible model of low real interest rates and unbacked government debt," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 477-508, December.
    14. Wojciech Kopczuk & Joseph P. Lupton, 2007. "To Leave or Not to Leave: The Distribution of Bequest Motives," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(1), pages 207-235.
    15. W. Botzen & Jeroen Bergh, 2014. "Specifications of Social Welfare in Economic Studies of Climate Policy: Overview of Criteria and Related Policy Insights," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 58(1), pages 1-33, May.
    16. George Constantinides & John Donaldson & Rajnish Mehra, 2007. "Junior is rich: bequests as consumption," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(1), pages 125-155, July.
    17. repec:dgr:uvatin:20070074 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Stefan Hochguertel & Henry Ohlsson, 2009. "Compensatory inter vivos gifts," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(6), pages 993-1023.
    19. James B. Bullard & Steven Russell, 1998. "Monetary steady states in a low real interest rate economy," Working Papers 1994-012, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    20. Katarina Nordblom & Henry Ohlsson, 2011. "Bequests, gifts, and education: links between intergenerational transfers," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 343-358, April.
    21. Jens Kvaerner, 2016. "What Can Shocks to Life Expectancy Reveal About Bequest Motives?," 2016 Meeting Papers 1381, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    climate change; discounting; infinitely-lived agents; intergenerational equity; overlapping generations; time preference;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eth:wpswif:10-128. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwethch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.