期刊名称:CORE Discussion Papers / Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
出版年度:2008
卷号:1
出版社:Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
摘要:This paper studies the design of a nonlinear social security scheme in a society where
individuals differ in two respects: productivity and degree of myopia. Myopic individuals
may not save "enough" for their retirement because their "myopic self" emerges when
labor supply and savings decisions are made. The social welfare function is paternalistic:
the rate of time preference of the far-sighted (which corresponds to the "true" preferences
of the myopics) is used for both types. We show that the paternalistic solution does not
necessarily imply forced savings for the myopics. This is because paternalistic
considerations are mitigated or even outweighed by incentive effects. Our numerical
results suggest that as the number of myopic individuals increases, there is less
redistribution and more forced saving. Furthermore, as the number of myopic increases,
the desirability of social security (measured by the difference between social welfare with
and without social security) increases.