Showing papers by "Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas published in 2000"
TL;DR: The authors examined the consequences of social security reform for the inequality of consumption across individuals, and found that, under the permanent income hypothesis, inequality is at least in part the result of individual risk in earnings or asset returns, the effects of which accumulate over time to increase inequality within groups of people as they age.
Abstract: This paper examines the consequences of social security reform for the inequality of consumption across individuals. The idea is that inequality is at least in part the result of individual risk in earnings or asset returns, the effects of which accumulate over time to increase inequality within groups of people as they age. Institutions such as social security, that share risk across individuals, will moderate the transmission of individual risk into inequality. We examine how different social security systems, with different degrees of risk sharing, affect consumption inequality. We do so within the framework of the permanent income hypothesis, and also using richer models of consumption that incorporate precautionary saving motives and borrowing restrictions. Our results indicate that systems in which there is less sharing of earnings risk such as systems of individual accounts produce higher consumption inequality both before and after retirement. However, differences across individuals in the rate of return on assets (including social security assets held in individual accounts) produce only modest additional effects on inequality.
39 citations
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TL;DR: The authors revisited these results in the context of an overlapping generations model with two sources of heterogeneity: age and idiosyncratic shocks to labor income, and showed that aggregate dynamics are fully characterized by the evolution of the aggregate capital stock.
Abstract: This paper explores the implications of precautionary saving and life cycle behavior for business cycle fluctuations. Existing heterogenous agent models of the business cycle, with labor income uncertainty and incomplete markets, yield aggregate quantitative predictions that are almost indistinguishable from their representative agent counterpart. This 'quasi' aggregation theorem arises when idiosyncratic shocks are largely transitory. This paper revisits these results in the context of an overlapping generations model with two sources of heterogeneity: age and idiosyncratic shocks to labor income. Surprisingly, even with permanent labor income shocks and finite lives, the previous results are shown to hold: aggregate dynamics are fully characterized by the evolution of the aggregate capital stock. The implications for welfare and risk sharing are derived.
27 citations
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TL;DR: The authors examined the consequences of social security reform for the inequality of consumption across individuals, and found that, under the permanent income hypothesis, inequality is at least in part the result of individual risk in earnings or asset returns, the effects of which accumulate over time to increase inequality within groups of people as they age.
Abstract: This paper examines the consequences of social security reform for the inequality of consumption across individuals. The idea is that inequality is at least in part the result of individual risk in earnings or asset returns, the effects of which accumulate over time to increase inequality within groups of people as they age. Institutions such as social security, that share risk across individuals, will moderate the transmission of individual risk into inequality. We examine how different social security systems, with different degrees of risk sharing, affect consumption inequality. We do so within the framework of the permanent income hypothesis, and also using richer models of consumption that incorporate precautionary saving motives and borrowing restrictions. Our results indicate that systems in which there is less sharing of earnings risk such as systems of individual accounts produce higher consumption inequality both before and after retirement. However, differences across individuals in the rate of return on assets (including social security assets held in individual accounts) produce only modest additional effects on inequality.
2 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, a new explanation for the forward-premium and delayed-overshooting puzzles is proposed, which arises from a systematic under-reaction of short-term interest rate forecasts to current innovations.
Abstract: We propose a new explanation for the forward-premium and the delayed-overshooting puzzles. Both puzzles arise from a systematic under-reaction of short-term interest rate forecasts to current innovations. Accordingly, the forward premium is always a biased predictor of future depreciation; the bias can be so severe as to lead to negative coeffcients in the 'Fama' regression; delayed overshooting may or may not occur depending upon the persistence of interest rate innovations and the degree of under-reaction; lastly, for G-7 countries against the U.S., these puzzles can be rationalized for values of the model's parameters that match empirical estimates
1 citations