Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie

The paper analyzes the lifetime utility maximization problem of an agent who chooses her saving and timing of retirement in the presence of labor income risk in a simple setting where a pure redistributive pension scheme is in place. In this context, a precautionary motive for retirement, which pushes old workers to replace an uncertain labor income with certain pension payments, and to retire early is identified. The conditions for precautionary retirement and saving to arise are then characterized and interpreted in two settings. In the first setting, utility only depends on income, and a sufficiently low level of absolute prudence is necessary for precautionary retirement. A sufficiently high level is necessary however for precautionary saving, which can coexist with precautionary retirement only for intermediate values of absolute prudence. In the second setting, agent utility also depends on leisure, and three conditions allow the precautionary motive for retirement and saving to jointly operate: prudence, an index of absolute prudence sufficiently low and cross-prudence in leisure.

30. We have seen that most of the heresies rejected in Mishan have at least an element of truth in them formal or real. Either the conflict is apparent, not real; or Mishan is incorrect in his understanding of the problems which all relate to interpretation of measurement, and are nothing to do with the rational status of ordinalism. From a practical point of view the following propositions may be asserted:

This paper analyzes the effects of centralized bargaining over a nominal wage (indexation) rule on a small open economy with fixed exchange rates. It is shown that the relative bargaining power of the confederation of employers and the union, respectively, affects not only the level of the endogenous variables but also their reaction to exogenous disturbances. If the union's power exceeds a critical value, positive aggregate demand shocks increase unemployment since the actual nominal wage rises more than the market clearing one. Moreover, if the union's power is sufficiently close to its upper bound, the overreaction of wages becomes so large that positive aggregate demand shocks even lead to a decrease in output and employment, i.e., the multipliers become negative.

The current paper develops the microeconomic case for a Tobin tax. It combines the noise-trader literature with the Tobin-tax-policy literature. Noise traders cause economic losses by inappropriately cashing out their investments. A Tobin tax can reduce such activity, thereby conferring a benefit on fundamentals investors. The paper identifies the conditions under which these gains would be largest and provides guidelines as to whether a tax is warranted. There is a trade-off because Tobin taxes discourage fundamentals investors from trading, and there are occasions when they would rationally choose to trade but do not because of the tax.