 Fiscal Policy as a Temptation Control DeviceANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics from Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics Abstract: We formulate an overlapping generations model with temptation and self-control preferences and incomplete market for commitment devices to study the role of two fiscal programs: social security and saving subsidy. In our environment, the distortions created by such fiscal programs work as a corrective tool that mitigates the adverse effect of succumbing to temptation on inter-temporal allocation and releases severity of self-control problem. Our results indicate that both fiscal programs potentially lead to welfare gains; however, the driving mechanisms are different. Welfare gains associated with a social security program result mainly from releasing self-control costs while welfare gains associated with a saving subsidy program are mainly driven by mitigating inter-temporal allocation distortion. In addition, we also find that the direction and size of welfare effects vary substantially when allowing for different tax-financing instruments as well as when accounting for general equilibrium price adjustments. JEL-codes: D1 E2 H3 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2012-595 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics from Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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