Financial unsustainability of pension systems in developed economies looms large on the horizon due to increasing life expectancy and continuous drop in fertility. In spite of a broad discussion, there has been but a little consensus on appropriate remedy. Besides, the theoretical arguments supporting funded pension systems often build upon the unrealistic assumption of stable financial markets and fair transformation of saved funds into retirement benefits. This work provides an insight into performance of various pension systems in real- world conditions using large-scale simulations of an overlapping generations model based on existing pension schemes in the Czech Republic, Sweden, and Chile. Specifically, my model assumes adverse demographics, individual un- certainty, volatile financial markets' returns, and administrative costs to affect social security systems and estimates magnitude of the effects. According to the results, each pension system seems to be partially advantageous - in pro- motion of economic growth, level of retirement benefits, or protection against market risks - but no scheme is dominant or dominated overall. JEL Classification E27, C68, H55 Keywords pension, OLG, simulation Author's e-mail Stepanek.Martin@hotmail.com Supervisor's e-mail Jaromir.Baxa@centrum.cz

Die Arbeit befasst sich im Rahmen eines Modells überlappender Generationen hauptsächlich mit der Frage, wie sich das Vererben von Vermögen und die Besteuerung der Erbschaften auf die Vermögensverteilung auswirkt. Darüber hinaus wird allgemeiner der Aspekt der Effizienz der Erbschaftsteuer untersucht. Zudem werden verschiedene Vererbungsmotive behandelt, Ungleichheitsmaße vorgestellt und ein kurzer Einblick in das deutsche Erbschaftsteuerrecht gegeben.

Die Arbeit befasst sich im Rahmen eines Modells überlappender Generationen hauptsächlich mit der Frage, wie sich das Vererben von Vermögen und die Besteuerung der Erbschaften auf die Vermögensverteilung auswirkt. Darüber hinaus wird allgemeiner der Aspekt der Effizienz der Erbschaftsteuer untersucht. Zudem werden verschiedene Vererbungsmotive behandelt, Ungleichheitsmaße vorgestellt und ein kurzer Einblick in das deutsche Erbschaftsteuerrecht gegeben.

This dissertation both theoretically and empirically examines the relationship between health and wealth, using proxies for health and wealth that are standard in the economics literature. We first model the endogenous interactions between life expectancy and income by modifying a standard overlapping generation model to allow individuals to directly choose their own longevity. The model displays a positive feedback between life expectancy and income that generates multiple stable equilibria. The worse equilibrium is a “poverty-trap” in which poverty and low longevity reinforce each other. The second portion of the dissertation is empirical. We first show that income has statistically significant effects on various proxies for health. The results are robust to different ways of controlling for the endogeneity of income: both instrumental variable estimation with external instruments and also generalized method of moments estimation when internal instruments are applied. We next directly test for the causal relationship between income and various proxies for health using three panel Granger causality tests. Evidence is found to support the existence of a bi-directional causal link. Sensitivity tests further suggest that middle-income countries play a more important role than low-income countries in explaining the overall wealth-health causality.

This dissertation both theoretically and empirically examines the relationship between health and wealth, using proxies for health and wealth that are standard in the economics literature. We first model the endogenous interactions between life expectancy and income by modifying a standard overlapping generation model to allow individuals to directly choose their own longevity. The model displays a positive feedback between life expectancy and income that generates multiple stable equilibria. The worse equilibrium is a “poverty-trap” in which poverty and low longevity reinforce each other. The second portion of the dissertation is empirical. We first show that income has statistically significant effects on various proxies for health. The results are robust to different ways of controlling for the endogeneity of income: both instrumental variable estimation with external instruments and also generalized method of moments estimation when internal instruments are applied. We next directly test for the causal relationship between income and various proxies for health using three panel Granger causality tests. Evidence is found to support the existence of a bi-directional causal link. Sensitivity tests further suggest that middle-income countries play a more important role than low-income countries in explaining the overall wealth-health causality.

This dissertation consists of three essays on different aspects of water management. The first essay focuses on the sustainability of freshwater use by introducing the notion that altruistic parents do bequeath economic assets for their offspring. Constructing a two-period, over-lapping generational model, an optimal ratio of consumption and pollution for old and young generations in each period is determined. Optimal levels of water consumption and pollution change according to different parameters, such as, altruistic degree, natural recharge rate, and population growth. The second essay concerns water sharing between countries in the case of trans-boundary river basins. The paper recognizes that side payments fail to forge water-sharing agreement among the international community and that downstream countries have weak bargaining power. An interconnected game approach is developed by linking the water allocation issue with other non-water issues such as trade or border security problems, creating symmetry between countries in bargaining power. An interconnected game forces two countries to at least partially cooperate under some circumstances. The third essay introduces the concept of virtual water (VW) into a traditional international trade model in order to estimate water savings for a water scarce country. A two country, two products and two factors trade model is developed, which includes not only consumers and producer’s surplus, but also environmental externality of water use. The model shows that VW trade saves water and increases global and local welfare. This study should help policy makers to design appropriate subsidy or tax policy to promote water savings especially in water scarce countries.

QC 2011021

This thesis investigates the link between optimal carbon tax and endogenous longevity. It considers an overlapping generation model with clean and dirty intermediate goods. Externality caused by producing dirty intermediate goods damages the final goods productionas well as the agents’ longevity. From the social planner’s problem, the cost of carbon emission is formulated. Then, the Pigouvian carbon tax rate is used to internalize such costs. With the two channels of impact of carbon emission combined, the theoretical results suggest that (i) the current carbon tax may abstract from local health costs of carbon emission, especially in rich economies, (ii) in poor economies, the government may be lowering the carbon tax at the expense of their elderly’s welfare, and (iii) the government in economies transitioning from poverty to richness should raise their carbon tax level above that of poor economies. Deeper investigation into the mechanism and a quantitative analysis would beneeded. Future studies can also include endogenous technological change or extend to amulti-economy model.

La mondialisation financière des dernières décennies témoigne du phénomène du déséquilibre mondial dans lequel les comptes déficitaires actuels de certaines grandes économies avancées sont continuellement financés par certains pays en développement avec des taux de croissance élevés et des stocks de capitaux rares. Sur le plan théorique, le modèle de croissance néoclassique implique qu’une économie avec une pénurie de capitaux aurait un produit marginal élevé de capital et un taux d’intérêt élevé d’autarcie. Par conséquent, lors de l’intégration avec la capitale mobile gratuite, ce pays éprouverait les entrées nettes de capitaux nets afin que le taux d’intérêt domestique soit égal au reste du taux mondial (Lucas 1990). De plus, une économie qui se développe plus rapidement que le reste du monde aurait également une demande d’investissement plus élevée et devrait connaître les entrées de capitaux totaux nets (Gourinchas and Jeanne 2013). Les déséquilibres mondiaux sont le résultat de l’hétérogénéité des tendances de l’épargne et des investissements dans tous les pays. En effet, un pays connaît un apport de capitaux si son économie est inférieure à son investissement : ce pays emprunte au reste du monde si sa sauvegarde est supérieure à son investissement. La thèse emploierait la croissance de la productivité pour afficher les sources de lumière sur cette hétérogénéité entre les pays. [...] / The financial globalization for the past decades witnesses the global imbalance phenomenon on which the deficit current accounts by some large advanced economics are continuously financed by some developing economies with the high output growth rates and the scarce capital stocks. On the theoretical ground, the Neo-Classical growth model implies that one economy with scarcity of capital would have a high marginal product of capital and a high autarky interest rate therefore, at the integration with the free mobile capital, that country would experience the net total capital inflows so that the domestic interest rate equals that to the rest of world’s rate (Lucas 1990). Furthermore, one economy growing faster than the rest of the world would also have a higher investment demand and should experience the inflows of net total capitals (Gourinchas and Jeanne 2015). The global imbalances are the result of the heterogeneity in the patterns of savings and investments across countries. Indeed, one country experiences an inflow of capital if its saving is less that its investment: that country borrows from the rest of the world to finance the excess investment demand. Similarly, one country would lend to the rest of the world if its saving is higher than its investment. The thesis would employ the productivity growth to shed the refresh lights on this heterogeneity across countries. [...]

Sverige rör sig mot ett kontantlöst samhälle i en takt som uppmärksammas internationellt. Det svenska betalningsväsendet kan komma att genomgå omfattande strukturella förändringar inom snar framtid. En av dessa förändringar kan antas vara införandet av den digitala centralbanksvalutan (CBDC) e-kronan. Då språnget mot det kontantlösa samhället börjat uttrycka sig i resten av världen är olika länders centralbanker mitt uppe i att reda ut de makroekonomiska effekter som en CBDC medför. Då e-kronan är ett nytt fenomen existerar det inte någon omfattande empirisk forskning, utan förhållandesättet är fortfarande teoretiskt. Vi undersöker därför de makroekonomiska effekter som kan tänkas uppstå vid införandet av en räntebärande e-krona från kort till lång sikt, samt diskuterar möjligheten för att använda e-kronan som ett penningpolitiskt styrmedel. Vi finner utifrån en modifiering av IS-MP-PC-modellen att en räntebärande e-krona som sätts i enlighet med inflationsmålet har liknande makroekonomiska effekter som styrräntan har idag. Vidare utvidgar vi en överlappande generationsmodell och visar på en undanträngning av reala tillgångar på lång sikt vid höga räntenivåer på e-kronan relativt till räntan på reala tillgångar i ett intergenerationellt sammanhang. / Sweden is moving towards a cashless society at an internationally recognized pace. The Swedish payment system may undergo extensive structural changes in the near future. One of these changes is assumed to be the introduction of the digital central bank currency (CBDC) e-krona. As the leap towards a cashless society has begun to manifest itself in the rest of the world, various countries' central banks are in the midst of figuring out the macroeconomic effects that a CBDC brings. As the e-krona is a new phenomenon, there is no extensive empirical research and the approach is still theoretical. We therefore investigate the macroeconomic effects that may arise from the introduction of an interest-bearing e-krona from the short to the long term and discuss the possibility of using the e-krona as a monetary policy instrument. By modifying the IS-MP-PC-model we find that an interest-bearing e-krona set in accordance with the inflation target has similar macroeconomic effects as the policy rate today. Furthermore, we extend an overlapping generations model and show a crowding out effect of real assets in the long run when the interest rate on the e-krona is high relative to the interest rate on real assets in an intergenerational context.