The Effects Of Social Security: Evidence For Seventeen Countries
- Topics:
- Social Security
- Source:
- Ohio State University
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Overview: This paper explains an Euler equation for per capita consumption to investigate whether social security increases consumption ceteris paribus in seventeen countries. Following the seminal work of Martin Feldstein, the literature has estimated consumption functions to address this question. Unfortunately, consumption functions confound structural and expectational parameters, making their interpretation problematical. Furthermore, if their variables are difference-stationary, least squares may produce inconsistent parameter estimates and must virtually always produce inconsistent standard errors for the estimated parameters. By contrast, under reasonable assumptions, generalized method of moments consistently estimates the parameters and standard errors of Euler equations. Moreover, the parameters are more readily interpretable. The paper finds strong evidence that social security increases consumption ceteris paribus.
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Format: PDF | Size: 506KB | Date: Feb 2003 | Pages: 18
