Download or read book An Analysis of U S Fiscal and Generational Imbalances written by Nicoletta Batini and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper updates existing measures of the U.S. fiscal gap to include federal laws up to and including the mid-December 2010 federal fiscal stimulus. It then applies the methodology of generational accounting to establish how the burden of adjustment required to attain fiscal sustainability is shared across generations. We find that the U.S. fiscal and generational imbalances are large under plausible parametric assumptions, and, while not much affected by the financial crisis, they have not improved much by the passing of the Final Healthcare Legislation. We find that, under our baseline scenario, a full elimination of the fiscal and generational imbalances would require all taxes to go up and all transfers to be cut immediately and permanently by 35 percent. A delay in the adjustment makes it more costly.

Download or read book Fiscal and Generational Imbalances written by Jagadeesh Gokhale and published by American Enterprise Institute. This book was released on 2003 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many appreciate that the federal government's finances are shaky. However, few realize how bad they really are. As we approach a time when entitlement outlays dominate federal spending, this book recommends shifting to a new, forward-looking method of analyzing our fiscal position.

Download or read book Generational Accounting written by Holger Bonin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the concepts used to assess the sustainability of fiscal policy in a changing demographic environment, generational accounting has become the most prominent. This book gives a complete and up-to-date introduction to the theory and practice of the method. It reveals deficiencies of the original residual concept and discusses various measures of intergenerational redistribution based on the recent sustainability approach to generational accounting. An application using data on German public finances serves to provide an in-depth explanation and practical illustration of the technique. The study develops new procedures to evaluate the fiscal externalities of migration and the redistribution of net wealth among living generations resulting from Social Security reform. The book is an indispensable source of reference for analysts employing generational accounting and for those wishing to study intertemporal redistribution through fiscal policy.

Download or read book Generational Accounting around the World written by Alan J. Auerbach and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The realities of mounting government debt, tax burdens, and an aging population raise serious concerns about the financial legacy confronting future generations. How great a fiscal burden will current policies leave to subsequent generations, and how might changes in those policies alter the intergenerational distribution of public welfare? Generational accounting has recently emerged as a robust new method of fiscal analysis and planning designed to assess the long-term sustainability of fiscal policy and to measure the extent of the financial load ultimately borne by present and future generations. A seminal contribution to public economics, generational accounting has already been adopted by 23 nations around the world. Combining the latest and most extensive country-by-country generational analyses with a comprehensive review of generational accounting's innovative methodology, these papers are a consummate resource for economists, political scientists, and policy makers concerned with fiscal health and responsibility.

Download or read book Generational Policy written by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-11-07 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How generational policy affects the sustainability of a government's fiscal policy. In these eight 2002 Cairoli Lectures, presented at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Laurence Kotlikoff shows how generational policy works, how it is measured, and how much it matters. Kotlikoff discusses the incidence and measurement of generational policy, the relationship of generational policy to monetary policy, and the vacuity of deficits, taxes, and transfer payments as economic measures of fiscal policy. Kotlikoff also illustrates generational policy's general equilibrium effects with a dynamic life-cycle simulation model and reviews the empirical evidence testing intergenerational altruism and risk sharing. The lectures were delivered as Argentina faced a devastating depression triggered, in large part, by unsustainable generational policy. Throughout the book, Kotlikoff connects his messages about generational policy to the Argentine situation and the Argentine government's policy mistakes.

Download or read book Generational Accounting written by Alan J. Auerbach and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Generational Accounting for France written by Mr.Ousmane Dore and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1998-02-01 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper presents the first set of generational accounts prepared for France, illustrating the impact on different generations of current policy settings. It was developed using age profiles of taxes and transfers drawn from a 1990 survey and recent demographic projections. The results reported suggest that if all living generations were protected from future policy changes, current policy rules would imply a net tax burden on future generations more than 11⁄2 times as large as that on current newborn generations. If the assumption that young living generations are protected is relaxed, a large net-tax imbalance in favor of “babyboomers” emerges.

Download or read book Generational Accounts for the United States An Update written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although relatively new, generational accounting has been used in 26 countries to evaluate the generational stance of national fiscal policies. Generational accounting calculates the size of prospective net tax burdens and lifetime net tax rates that different generations face under current fiscal policy-information that standard budget presentations do not reveal. This method can also be used to calculate the policy changes required for achieving a generationally balanced and therefore sustainable fiscal policy that implies equal lifetime net tax rates on today's newborns and future generations (those born after 1998). Calculations made two years ago suggested a sizable generational imbalance in U.S. fiscal policy, implying lifetime net tax rates on future generations that are 72 percent higher than those on newborns in 1995. Since then, unexpectedly strong growth in both gross domestic product (GDP) and the tax share of GDP has boosted revenues, and slow growth in defense spending has reduced federal purchases as a share of GDP to a postwar low. Those developments augur federal budget surpluses for at least a decade and portend a corresponding reduction in the generational imbalance.

Download or read book The Coming Generational Storm written by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005-01-18 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to avoid a fiscal crisis in the next generation— and how to protect yourself if the government acts too late: policy recommendations and individual strategies to protect against skyrocketing tax rates, drastically reduced health and retirement benefits, high inflation, and a ruined currency. In 2030, as 77 million baby boomers hobble into old age, walkers will outnumber strollers; there will be twice as many retirees as there are today but only 18 percent more workers. How will America handle this demographic overload? How will Social Security and Medicare function with fewer working taxpayers to support these programs? According to Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns, if our government continues on the course it has set, we'll see skyrocketing tax rates, drastically lower retirement and health benefits, high inflation, a rapidly depreciating dollar, unemployment, and political instability. The government has lost its compass, say Kotlikoff and Burns, and the current administration is heading straight into the coming generational storm. But don't panic. To solve a problem you must first understand it. Kotlikoff and Burns take us on a guided tour of our generational imbalance, first introducing us to the baby boomers—their long retirement years and "the protracted delay in their departure to the next world." Then there's the "fiscal child abuse" that will double the taxes paid by the next generation. There's also the "deficit delusion" of the under-reported national debt. And none of this, they say, will be solved by any of the popularly touted remedies: cutting taxes, technological progress, immigration, foreign investment, or the elimination of wasteful government spending. So how can the United States avoid this demographic/fiscal collision? Kotlikoff and Burns propose bold new policies, including meaningful reforms of Social Security, and Medicare. Their proposals are simple, straightforward, and geared to attract support from both political parties. But just in case politicians won't take the political risk to chart a new direction, Kotlikoff and Burns also offer a "life jacket"—guidelines for individuals to protect their financial health and retirement. This paperback edition of The Coming Generational Storm has been revised and updated and includes a new foreword by the authors.

Download or read book Generational Accounts Aggregate Saving and Intergenerational Distribution written by Willem H. Buiter and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Are generational accounts informative about the effect of the budget on the intergenerational distribution of resources and (when augmented with generation-specific propensities to consume out of life-time resources) on aggregate consumption and saving? The paper makes three points. First, the usefulness of generational accounts lives or dies with the strict life-cycle model of household consumption. Voluntary intergenerational gifts or liquidity constraints may therefore adversely affect or even destroy their informativeness. Second, even when the life-cycle model holds, generational accounts only measure the effect of the budget on the lifetime consumption of private goods and services. They ignore the intergenerational (re- )distribution associated with the government's provision of public goods and services. Third, generational accounting ignores the effect of the budget on before-tax and before-transfer quantities and prices, including before-tax and -transfer distribution of life-time resources across generations and intertemporal relative prices. That is, it does not handle incidence or general equilibrium repercussions very well. Although useful, generational accounts should therefore carry the label 'handle with great care.'

Download or read book The Clash of Generations written by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-03-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How America went bankrupt and how we can save ourselves—as a country and as individuals—from economic disaster. The United States is bankrupt, flat broke. Thanks to accounting that would make Enron blush, America's insolvency goes far beyond what our leaders are disclosing. The United States is a fiscal basket case, in worse shape than the notoriously bailed-out countries of Greece, Ireland, and others. How did this happen? InThe Clash of Generations, experts Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns document our six-decade, off-balance-sheet, unsustainable financing scheme. They explain how we have balanced our longer lives on the backs of our (relatively few) children. At the same time, we've been on a consumption spree, saving and investing less than nothing. And that's not to mention the evisceration of the middle class and a financial system that has proven it can't be trusted. Kotlikoff and Burns outline grassroots strategies for saving ourselves—and especially our children—from what could be a truly catastrophic financial collapse. Kotlikoff and Burns sounded the alarm in their widely acclaimedThe Coming Generational Storm, but politicians didn't listen. Now the need for action is even more urgent. It's up to us to demand radical reform of our tax system, our healthcare system, and our Social Security system, and to insist on better paths to investment return than those provided by Wall Street (mis)managers. Kotlikoff and Burns's "Purple Plans" (so called because they will appeal to both Republicans and Democrats) have been endorsed by a who's who of economists and offer a new way forward; and their revolutionary investment strategy for individuals replaces the idea of financial capital with "life decision capital." Of course, we won't be doing all this just for ourselves. We need to fix America's fiscal mess before our kids inherit it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMKw76lBn0k&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Download or read book Generational Accounts for the United States written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Generational Accounting and Immigration in the United States written by Alan J. Auerbach and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: In recent years, the renewed strength of immigration to the United States has sparked a debate about the economic effects of immigration. A central issue in this debate has been the fiscal impact of immigrants. Most research in this area has adopted a static, cross-section approach in assessing the net impact of immigrants on the economy's fiscal position. However, a dynamic approach is important because of the age dependency of many government tax and expenditure programs, and necessary to take the descendents of immigrants into account. This paper reconsiders the fiscal impact of immigrants over time, using the technique of generational accounting. We may summarize our results with three findings: 1. Because new immigrants represent a larger fraction of future generations than of present ones, shifting the burden onto future generations also shifts it, relatively, onto new immigrants. Thus, if the entire fiscal imbalance currently estimated for the United States is placed on future generations, then the presence of new immigrants reduces the burden borne by natives. 2. When a policy of fiscal responsibility' is followed, whether there is a fiscal gain from immigration depends on the extent to which government purchases rise with the immigrant population. 3. The impact of immigration on fiscal balance is extremely small relative to the size of the overall imbalance itself. Thus, immigration should be viewed neither as a major source of the existing imbalance, nor as a potential solution to it.

Download or read book Fiscal and Generational Imbalances and Generational Accounts written by Jagadeesh Gokhale and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The consistent refusal by Obama Administration officials to release details of the Office of Management and Budget's long range budget projections compelled the use of the only other reliable source of budget information: The Congressional Budget Office's 10-year budget projections from March 2012. In making its calculations, this paper extends those projections beyond 10 years using CBO's long range economic assumptions. This study also updates micro-data relative profiles used to distributed federal taxes, transfers, and other federal expenditures by age and gender. Provision by the Social Security Administration's Felicitie Bell of US population projections and underlying demographic assumptions used in the Social Security trustees' 2012 annual report and responses by CBO officials to the author's clarifying questions on CBO's federal budget accounting conventions are gratefully acknowledged.

Download or read book Social Security and Medicare Policy from the Perspective of Generational Accounting written by Alan J. Auerbach and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our previous study (Auerbach, Gokhale and Kotlikoff 1991) introduced the concept of generational accounting, a method of determining how the burden of fiscal policy falls on different generations. it found that fiscal policy in the U.S. is out of balance, in terms of projected generational burdens. This means that either current generations will bear a larger share (than we project under current law) of the burden of the government's spending or that future generations will have to pay, on average, at least 21 percent more, on a growth-adjusted basis, than will those generations who have just been born. These conclusions were based on relatively optimistic assumptions about the path of social security sod Medicare policies, namely that the accumulation of a social security trust fund would continue and that Medicare costs would not rise as a share of QP. In this paper, we simulate the effects of realistic alternative paths for social security and Medicare. Our results suggest that such alternative policies could greatly increase the imbalance in generational policy, making not only future generations pay significantly more, but current young Americans as well. For example, continued expansion of Medicare in this decade alone could double the 21 percent imbalance figure if the bill for this Medicare growth is shifted primarily to future generations.

Download or read book Generational Policy and the Macroeconomic Measurement of Tax Incidence written by Juan Carlos Conesa and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper we show that the generational accounting framework used in macroeconomics to measure tax incidence can, in some cases, yield inaccurate measurements of the tax burden across age cohorts. This result is very important for policy evaluation, because it shows that the selection of tax policies designed to change generational imbalances could be misleading. We illustrate this problem in the context of a Social Security reform where we show how fiscal policy can affect the intergenerational gap across cohorts without impacting the distribution of welfare. We provide a more accurate procedure that only measures changes in generational imbalances derived from policies with real effects.

Download or read book An International Comparison of Generational Accounts written by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper summarizes findings reported in a forthcoming NBER volume entitled 'Generational Accounting Around the World.' This volume includes generational accounting studies for 17 countries. The findings are shocking. The world's leading industrial powers - the U.S., Japan, and Germany - all have severe imbalances in their generational policies. Unless currently living members of these countries pay more in net taxes or unless these countries cut their purchases of goods and services, future Americans, Japanese and Germans will face much higher rates of lifetime net taxation. Leaving current Americans untouched and maintaining the current projected time-path of government purchases will leave future Americans collectively facing about 50% higher net tax rates over their lifetimes than those facing a newborn American based on current U.S. tax-transfer policy. For future Germans, the imbalance means they would face lifetime net tax rates that are roughly twice as high as those now in place. And for future Japanese, policy inaction means lifetime net tax rates that are more than 2.5 times are high as current values. Other countries are also running imbalanced policies. Of the 17 countries studied here, five (Japan, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, and Brazil) have extreme imbalances. Another five (the United States, Norway, Portugal, Argentina and Belgium) have severe imbalances. Three countries - Australia, Denmark and France - have substantial imbalances. Canada's appears to be essentially in generational balance. The remaining countries - New Zealand, Thailand, and Sweden - have negative imbalances; i.e. their policies, if maintained, would leave future generations facing lower lifetime net tax rates than current current newborns