Optimal intergenerational transfers: Public education and pensions

Monisankar Bishnu, Shresth Garg, Tishara Garg and Tridip Ray

CAMA Working Papers from Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University

Abstract: In presence of imperfections in education loan market, the standard policy response of intervening solely on education front, funded through taxes and transfers, necessarily hurts the initial working population. The literature suggests compensating them via pay-as-you-go pensions as a possible solution. But for various reasons sustainability of PAYG pensions is under serious doubt. We carry out the optimal policy exercise of a utilitarian government in a dynamically efficient economy with pension and education support obeying the Pareto criterion. We find that expansion of one instrument along with the other emerges as the optimal response, however, once the complete market level of education is achieved, the optimal policy suggests phasing pensions out. Eventually, government leads the economy to an equilibrium with zero pension and the Golden Rule level of education. This is achieved by exploiting only market opportunities without relying on other factors including human capital externalities, general equilibrium effects or sociopolitical factors.

Keywords: Public education; PAYG pension; intergenerational transfers; welfare state (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-dge
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Optimal intergenerational transfers: Public education and pensions (2021)
Working Paper: Optimal Intergenerational Transfers: Public Education and Pensions (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:een:camaaa:2020-58

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