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Discussion Paper
Introducing the SCE Public Policy Survey
Households cope with considerable uncertainty in forming plans and making decisions. This includes uncertainty about their personal situations as well as about their external environment. An important source of uncertainty arises from (often abrupt) changes in government policy, including changes in tax rates and in the benefit level of social programs. Tracking individuals’ subjective beliefs about future policy changes is important for understanding their behavior as consumers and workers. For example, knowing the extent to which tax changes and other shifts in public policy are ...
Journal Article
At the Richmond Fed: Wiser Policy for Seniors
The American population is aging rapidly. The share of people who are 65 or older grew from 12 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2020. It's forecast to grow to 22 percent by 2040, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.In view of this trend, economists are attempting to improve their understanding of the economic decisions facing older people — decisions that are likely to become increasingly important for the U.S. economy as the population distribution skews older.
Working Paper
Time Averaging Meets Labor Supplies of Heckman, Lochner, and Taber
We incorporate time-averaging into the canonical model of Heckman, Lochner, and Taber (1998) (HLT) to study retirement decisions, government policies, and their interaction with the aggregate labor supply elasticity. The HLT model forced all agents to retire at age 65, while our model allows them to choose career lengths. A benchmark social security system puts all of our workers at corner solutions of their career-length choice problems and lets our model reproduce HLT model outcomes. But alternative tax and social security arrangements dislodge some agents from those corners, bringing ...
Working Paper
Time Averaging Meets Labor Supplies of Heckman, Lochner, and Taber
We add endogenous career lengths to the Heckman, Lochner, and Taber (1998a) (HLT) model with its credit markets and within-period labor supply indivisibilities, all of which are essential features of Ljungqvist and Sargent (2006) “time-averaging.” A benchmark social security system puts all workers at corner solutions of their retirement decisions. That lets our model reproduce most outcomes in HLT’s model with its inelastic labor supply and mandatory retirement date for all types of workers. Eight types of workers are indexed by pairs of innate abilities and choices of education ...