This paper examines the role of marital connections in models of intertemporal household behavior. Recent work by Bernheim and Bagwell implies that such connections might vastly expand the scope of neutrality results. The present work studies several formulations including not only marriage but also descriptions of how people choose spouses. Purposeful choices lead to assortative mating. All versions of the framework tend to lead away from cross-sectional neutrality results. The analysis suggests that one may be able to derive a solution for a parthenogenetic model and then interpret it as consistent with Nash equilibrium behavior in a world with marriage.

The literature evaluating tax changes within an intertemporal general equilibrium framework subdivides into representative agent and overlapping generations formulations. Papers in the former class have developed techniques analogous to those routine for static analyses. I show that the same general approach works for the overlapping generations model. The context is the system from Auerbach and Kotlikoff's Dynamic Fiscal Policy. The proposed methodology allows one to examine stability and determinancy issues for the model, it deals precisely with small policy changes, and it can easily handle bundles of changes. I present comparative static results for comparison with existing work.

[This paper analyzes nonlinear growth models in which agents' expectations have a role in determining present behavior. Assuming agents have perfect foresight, we develop sufficiency conditions for the local stability of a given steady state. We then briefly discuss several examples in which stability prevails.]

This paper presents a model in which a country's measured average propensity to save endogenously rises when its economy industrializes. The model has agricultural and manufacturing sectors. Only agriculture uses land. If at early dates income per capita is low, agricultural consumption is important, land is valuable, and capital gains on land may constitute most wealth accumulation, leaving the country's NIPA APS low. If exogenous technological progress raises incomes over time, Engel's law shifts demand to manufactured goods. Then land's portfolio importance relative to reproducible capital diminishes and the national income and products account saving rate can rise.

This paper analyses the very long run, or "stationary state, " impact of an unfunded social security system. We use an overlapping generations model framework. A key feature is that while parents care about their children and can leave non-negative bequests to them, children also care about their parents and can make non-negative "gifts" to them. We show that the possibility of negative "net bequests" may make social security less harmful to private wealth accumulation than would otherwise be the case. A subsidiary finding is that risk-loving behaviour may emerge for some households due to the nature of intergenerational transfers within family lines.

Journal Article Household Bequest Behaviour and the National Distribution of Wealth Get access John Laitner John Laitner University of Michigan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 46, Issue 3, July 1979, Pages 467–483, https://doi.org/10.2307/2297014 Published: 01 July 1979 Article history Received: 01 September 1976 Accepted: 01 July 1978 Published: 01 July 1979

This paper investigates the role in household wealth accumulation of saving for bequests. It employs data from a 1988 survey of TIAA-CREF annuitants designed to measure pension and other net worth, as well as lifetime earnings. About half of the households in the data plan to leave estates, and we find that their behavior conforms with theoretical altruistic models. For the same families, the amount of wealth which we attribute to estate building is large. Nevertheless, altruism towards one's children does not seem to be the major explanation of saving in the overall sample.

This paper examines duopoly models in which each firm tries to guess the reaction of its rival to a change in its output. We seek equilibria in which the guesses are accurate, or “rational.” For static models we discover that many output combinations (X, Y) can fit into such equilibria and that our concept of “rationality” must necessarily be one-sided: if a firm has accurate expectations at (X, Y) about its rival's reactions, the competitor's reactions cannot themselves be based on “rational” calculations. Turning to a dynamic model, we find that an oversupply of solution pairs continues to be a problem.

[This paper investigates the role of inheritances in the determination of the national distribution of wealth. Assuming that households care both about their own consumption and that of their descendants, we construct a model of family bequest behavior. Then, embedding the model in a simple consumption-loan framework, we study the evolution of the national distribution of wealth. A key generalization of previous work is that we allow bequests to both male and female children so that each family receives two inheritances (one from the husband's parents and one from the wife's). This means the national distribution of wealth develops in a complicated manner depending on mating patterns. Using a fixed-point argument we prove the existence of a stationary distributionof wealth consistent with accurate expectations on the part of all households. We then present a test for uniqueness and several economic characterizations of all possible equilibria.]

This paper examines the role of bequests and inter vivos gifts in the U.S. economy, considering their importance in determining (i) the economy’s aggregate capital stock, (ii) the distribution of private net worth, and (iii) public policy outcomes and options. It focuses on several recent calibrated simulations.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)