The Political Economy of Social Security and Entitlements

在美国，就像在许多其他国家一样，公共福利计划的经济负担已经成为一个严重的财政问题。最值得注意的是社会保障制度，由于目前的人口构成，该制度最近一直是人们关注的焦点。婴儿潮一代退休的前景以及对下一代劳动者的要求，让许多人质疑退休福利的基本理念，即退休福利应该基于现收现付制，并被视为一种“权利”。该项目将研究被视为应享权利的转移制度。它将把这些视为政治经济学中的问题。所采取的方法是询问社会保障制度和公共资助的教育制度如何在竞争经济中成为政治和经济均衡。同时分析社会保障的一般均衡经济后果和政治经济学的研究很少。了解社会选择的政治经济学及其一般均衡效应之间的相互作用，对于理解它们对福利的影响、评估将社会保障从现收现付制转变为全额资助制度的建议以及评估减少公共教育经费的努力是重要的。一个动态的一般均衡模型将由多代代理人构建，该模型捕捉到了退休储蓄涉及的跨期选择问题的本质。

In the United States, as in many other countries, the economic burden of public entitlement programs has become a serious fiscal issue. Most notable is the Social Security system which has been the focus of much recent attention because of the current demographic makeup of the population. The prospect of the retirement of the baby boom generation and the demands that will place on the next generation of workers has caused many to question the basic idea that the provision of retirement benefits should be based on a pay-as-you-go system and regarded as an `entitlement`. This project will study the system of transfers that are regarded as entitlements. It will treat these as problems in political economy. The approach taken is to ask how a social security system and a publicly funded education system can emerge as both a political and an economic equilibrium in a competitive economy. Very little research has been done that simultaneously analyses the general equilibrium economic consequences and the political economy of social security. Understanding the interaction between political economy of social choices and their general equilibrium effects is important for understanding their welfare implications, for evaluating proposals for transforming social security from a pay-as-you-go system to a fully-funded system, and for evaluating efforts to decrease the public funding of education. A dynamic general equilibrium model will be constructed with multiple generations of agents, that capture the essence of the intertemporal choice problem involved in saving for retirement.