The book is about the well-known problem that a perfectlycompetitive economy, even if endowed with perfect foresight, can grow in an efficient manner. The causes of this strangeinefficiency are analyzed, and sufficientconditions forefficient economic growth are discussed. The most importantcontribution is the elaboration of a rather well-known, yetunproved, hypothesis which says that the existence of anonproducible productive asset, like land, prevents dynamicinefficiency. This is shown to hold outside steady stategrowth paths. Applications of the theoretical concepts andresults are...

Presented at the Workshop on the Origin and Furure of Social Security Schemes, Berlin, December 13 - 14, 1984

This book discusses aspects of allocation in housing and land market taxation with an analysis of the fundamentals of corresponding tax systems in North America and Western Europe. It provides a contrast to traditional analyses with similar objectives by focussing on the dynamic incidence of taxation and by taking into account the building land itself, not just as a production factor but also as an investment medium. The broader theoretical approach yields results which give rise to a reconsideration of well-loved notions about the taxation (and regulation) of housing and land markets. This...

The purpose of this book is to describe and to give a theoretical explanation of the developments of Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG)-financed public pension schemes in democracies from a positive point of view. The book especially tries to grasp the determinants for changes in PAYG-systems. It is shown that if confidence in the continuation of an operative public pension scheme is growing, the conversion from a Capital-Reserve to the PAYG system - which has occurred in the history of most schemes - can be explained out of the self-interest of the generations alive. On the other hand, if a PAYG-system...

A model of household decisions based on a bargaining approach is developed providing a comprehensive framework for the analysis of family behavior. Treating the family as an economic organization, household behavior is explained by the cooperation of utility maximizing individuals. The difference to traditional microeconomic household models is that theassumption of a joint household utility function is abandoned. Instead of this, a game theoretic approach is used to model family decisions as a result of intrafamily bargaining. Considering the development of the spouses human capital in a...

The book reviews monetary applications of overlapping gene- rations models and models with cash-in-advance constraints. It focuses on the implications for monetary economics. It tries to make sense of the available indeterminancy propositions. They are the most puzzling property of OGMs. The book surveys and synthesizes most of the available research papers. Assesses the usefulness of the approach for the advancement of monetary economics. The book can be used as a non-technical introductory text, which relies foremost on intuitive arguments.

The use of environmental resources involves strategic be- havior of self-interested agents, bargaining, cooperation and other efforts to provokeor settle conflicts. In order to model conflicts and cooperation in managingthese resources most papers contained in the book make use of advanced game theoretic concepts. The first six contributions investigate conceptual issues of international conflicts and cooperation while the other four address conflicts and cooperation arising in the context of monitoring and enforcing environmental controls. The emphasis is on demonstrating how new...

State of the art modeling of investment behavior and analysis of incentive and allocative effects of taxation on investment behavior are reported in these proceedings. Leading researchers from seven OECD countries treat problems ranging from modeling investment behavior and estimating investment equations with various data sets to detailed studies of tax influences on investment behavior. Particular attention is paid to tax reform plans, especially in West Germany and the UK. The role of financial variables and uncertainty is analysed. A major topic in the volume is recent work within Tobin's...

We are used to calling most developing countries overpopulated and consi- dering some industrialized countries (like West Germany) threatened by underpopulation. Analogous population policies with different objecti- ves are discussed. However, none of the measures suggested can be justi- fied or evaluated without an implicit concept of optimum population, a notion which has attracted attention ever since economics was made a science. The relevance of the subject and the recent rise in interest by popula- tion economists has motivated the organization of a conference on Opti- mal Population in...

This book contains a revised version of my Habilitationsschrift which has been accepted by the economic department of Dortmund University in 1991. It consists mostly of unpublished material which has been presented during the last years at the universities of Cologne, Dortmund, Hagen, Mannheim, and Munich and at a meeting in Wiesbaden. I am indebted to very many collegues for fruitful discussions. In par- ticular, I want to thank Friedrich Breyer, Johannes Hoffmann, Heinz Hollander, Wolfgang Leininger, Bruno Schonfelder, Gerhard Schwodi- auer, Hans-Werner Sinn, Klaus Spremann, and lochen...