Comments and Discussion (2000)
Shapiro, Matthew D. (Matthew David), Zeldes, Stephen P.
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity - 2000, 2
Production, sales, and the change in inventories : An identity that doesn't add up (1989)
Miron, Jeffrey A., Zeldes, Stephen P.
We examine two measures of monthly manufacturing production. The first is the index of industrial production; the second is constructed from the accounting identity that output equals sales plus the...
Social Security Money's Worth (1970)
John Geanakoplos, Olivia S. Mitchell, Stephen P. Zeldes
This paper describes how three money's worth measures -- the benefit-to-tax ratio, the internal rate of return, and the net present value -- are calculated and used in analyses of social security...
Would a Privatized Social Security System Really Pay a Higher Rate of Return? (1970)
John Geanakoplos, Olivia S. Mitchell, Stephen P. Zeldes
Many advocates of social security privatization argue that rates of return under a defined contribution individual account system would be much higher for all than they are under the current social...
Karen E. Dynan, Jonathan Skinner, Stephen P. Zeldes
The issue of whether higher lifetime income households save a larger fraction of their income is an important factor in the evaluation of tax and macroeconomic policy. Despite an outpouring of...
Precautionary Saving and Social Insurance.
Hubbard, R Glenn, Skinner, Jonathan, Zeldes, Stephen P
This paper argues that a life cycle model can replicate observed patterns in household wealth accumulation after counting explicitly for precautionary saving and asset-based, means-tested social...
John Geanakoplos, Olivia S. Mitchell, Stephen P. Zeldes
This paper describes how three money's worth measures -- the benefit-to-tax ratio, the internal rate of return, and the net present value -- are calculated and used in analyses of social security...
Would a Privatized Social Security System Really Pay a Higher Rate of Return?
John Geanakoplos, Olivia S. Mitchell, Stephen P. Zeldes
Many advocates of social security privatization argue that rates of return under a defined contribution individual account system would be much higher for all than they are under the current social...
Seasonality, Cost Shocks, and the Production Smoothing Model of Inventories
Jeffrey A. Miron, Stephen P. Zeldes
A great deal of research on the empirical behavior of inventories examines some variant of the production smoothing model of finished goods inventories. The overall assessment of this model that...
Ricardian Consumers With Keynesian Propensities
Robert B. Barsky, N. Gregory Mankiw, Stephen P. Zeldes
In this paper, we examine Ricardian equivalence of debt and tax finance in a world in which taxes are not lump-sum but are levied on risky labor income. First, we show that the marginal propensity to...
The Consumption of Stockholders and Non-Stockholders
N. Gregory Mankiw, Stephen P. Zeldes
Only one-fourth of U.S. families own stock. This paper examines whether the consumption of stockholders differs from the consumption of non-stockholders and whether these differences help explain the...
Ricardian Consumers with Keynesian Propensities.
Barsky, Robert B, Mankiw, N Gregory, Zeldes, Stephen P
This paper examines Ricardian equivalence in a world in which taxes arenot lump sum, but are levied on risky labor income. It shows that themarginal propensity to consume out of a tax cut, coupled...
O'Connell, Stephen A, Zeldes, Stephen P
When can a government run a rational Ponzi game, i.e., issue debt and never pay back any interest or principal? The transversalit y condition of each individual implies that such schemes require an i...
Seasonality, Cost Shocks, and the Production Smoothing Models of Inventories.
Miron, Jeffrey A, Zeldes, Stephen P
This paper examines whether the negative assessment of the production smoothin g model of inventories in the existing literature is due to inadequat e treatment of cost shocks or seasonal...
Monetary policy transmission through the consumption-wealth channel : commentary
Paper for a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York entitled Financial Innovation and Monetary Transmission
Precautionary Saving and Social Insurance
Glenn R. Hubbard, Jonathan Skinner, Stephen P. Zeldes
Microdata studies of household saving often find a significant group in the population with virtually no wealth, rising concerns about heterogeneity in motives for saving. In particular, this...
Consumption and Liquidity Constraints: An Empirical Investigation
Several recent studies have suggested that empirical rejections of the permanent income/life cycle model might be due to the existence of liquidity constraints. This paper tests the permanent income...
Production, Sales and the Change in Inventories: An Identity that Doesn't Add Up
Jeffrey A. Miron, Stephen P. Zeldes
In this paper we examine two different measures of monthly production that have been used by economists. The first measure, which we refer to as IP, is the index of industrial production constructed...
Ponzi Games and Ricardian Equivalence
Stephen A. O'Connell, Stephen P. Zeldes
Under certain conditions, a government can run a "rational Ponzi game," i.e., issue debt and never repay any interest or principal. Does Ricardian equivalence hold with respect to a tax cut that is...
Seasonality, Cost Shocks and the Production Smoothing Model of Inventories
Jeffrey A. Miron, Stephen P. Zeldes
In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the empirical behavior of inventories. A great deal of this research examines some variant of the production smoothing model of finished...
Seasonality, Cost Shocks and the Production Smoothing Model of Inventories
Jeffrey A. Miron, Stephen P. Zeldes
In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the empirical behavior of inventories. A great deal of this research examines some variant of the production smoothing model of finished...
Stephen A. O'Connell, Stephen P. Zeldes
When can a government borrow a dollar and never pay back any interest or principal? We call such an arrangement under perfect foresight a rational Ponzi game. We use the transversality condition...
Optimal Consumption with Stochastic Income: Deviations from Certainty Equivalence.
No one has derived closed-form solutions for consumption with stochastic labor income and constant relative risk aversion utility. A numerical technique is used here to give an accurate approximation...
Reforming Social Security with Progressive Personal Accounts
John Geanakoplos, Stephen P. Zeldes
The heated debate about how to reform Social Security has come to a standstill because the view of most Democrats (that Social Security must be a defined benefits plan similar in spirit to the...
Reforming Social Security with Progressive Personal Accounts
John Geanakoplos, Stephen P. Zeldes
The heated debate about how to reform Social Security has come to a standstill because the view of most Democrats (that Social Security must be a defined benefits plan similar in spirit to the...
Production, Sales, and the Change in Inventories: An Identity That Doesn`t Add Up
Jeffrey A. Miron, Stephen P. Zeldes
We examine two measures of monthly manufacturing production. The first is the index of industrial production; the second is constructed from the accounting identity that output equals sales plus the...
Dynamic Efficiency in the Gifts Economy
Stephen A. O'Connell, Stephen P. Zeldes
In the standard analysis of an overlapping generations economy with gifts from children to parents, each generation takes the actions of all other generations as given. The resulting "simultaneous...
The Importance of Precautionary Motives in Explaining Individual and Aggregate Saving
R. Glenn Hubbard, Jonathan Skinner, Stephen P. Zeldes
This paper examines predictions of a life-cycle simulation model -- in which individuals face uncertainty regarding their length of life, earnings, and out-of-pocket medical expenditures, and...
Precautionary Saving and Social Insurance
R. Glenn Hubbard, Jonathan Skinner, Stephen P. Zeldes
Microdata studies of household saving often find a significant group in the population with virtually no wealth, raising concerns about heterogeneity in motives for saving. In particular, this...
"Social Security Privatization: A Structure for Analysis"
Olivia S. Mitchell, Stephen P. Zeldes
This paper identifies the key economic issues that must be addressed in the debate over a privatized social security system. We examine a two-pillar plan. The first pillar would consist of a...
John Geanakoplos, Olivia S. Mitchell, Stephen P. Zeldes
This paper describes how three money's worth measures the benefit-to-tax ratio, the internal rate of return, and the net present value are calculated and used in analyses of social security reforms,...
Would a Privatized Social Security System Really Pay a Higher Rate of Return
John Genakoplos, Olivia S. Mitchell, Stephen P. Zeldes
Many advocates of social security privatization argue that rates of return under a defined contribution individual account system would be much higher for all than they are under the current social...
Karen E. Dynan, Jonathan Skinner, Stephen P. Zeldes
The issue of whether higher lifetime income households save a larger fraction of their income is an important factor in the evaluation of tax and macroeconomic policy. Despite an outpouring of...
Karen E. Dynan, Jonathan Skinner, Stephen P. Zeldes
The question of whether higherlifetime income households save a larger fraction of their income was the subject of much debate in the 1950s and 1960s, and while not resolved, it remains central to...
Consumption and Liquidity Constraints: An Empirical Investigation.
Several recent studies have suggested that empirical rejections of the permanent income/life cycle model may be due to the existence of liquidity constraints. This paper tests the permanent income...
John Geanakoplos, Olivia S. Mitchell, Stephen P. Zeldes
This paper describes how three money’s worth measures – the benefit-to-tax ratio, the internal rate of return, and the net present value – are calculated and used in analyses of social security...