In this paper, the authors develop an applied general equilibrium model to examine the effects of tax-favored retirement accounts on the capital stock. The results from their benchmark model indicate that a modest individual retirement account (IRA) contribution limit similar to that in effect during the early 1980s raises the steady-state capital stock by 6.18 percent; approximately 9 percent of IRA contributions constitutes incremental saving. The authors' results lend support to recent suggestions that retirement accounts with favorable tax treatment only for contributions above some base amount might provide more stimulus to saving than conventional IRAs.

Despite much work, economists have not been able to quantitatively account for the differences in the Japanese and U.S. saving rates after World War II. In this paper, we show that the use of actual Japanese total factor productivity growth rates in a standard growth model generates saving rates that are reasonably similar to the Japanese data between 1956 and 2000.

Much of the existing literature on social security has taken the extreme assumption that individuals have little or no altruism; this paper takes an opposite assumption that there is full two-sided altruism. When households insure members that belong to the same family line, privatizing social security can gain public support. In our benchmark model calibrated to the U.S. economy, privatization without compensation is favoured by 52% of the population. If social security participants are fully compensated for their contributions, and the transition to privatization is financed by a combination of debt and a consumption tax, 58% experience a welfare gain. These gains and the resulting public support for social security reform depend critically on a flexible labour market. If the labour supply elasticity is low, then support for privatization disappears.