Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/296442 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Citation: 
[Journal:] Theoretical Economics [ISSN:] 1555-7561 [Volume:] 18 [Issue:] 4 [Year:] 2023 [Pages:] 1375-1406
Publisher: 
The Econometric Society, New Haven, CT
Abstract: 
Fertility rates are declining in many countries. But are fertility rates inefficiently low? This paper addresses this question by exploring the efficiency properties of equilibria in an overlapping generations setting with endogenous fertility and dynastic parental altruism, using a particular formulation of the notion of P-efficiency proposed by Golosov, Jones, and Tertilt (2007). In this formulation, new lives increase social welfare only if the agents living those lives are not worse off than those agents of the same generation living in any allocation. In contrast with Schoonbroodt and Tertilt (2014), who show that any equilibrium for which non-negativity constraints on intergenerational transfers are binding is A-inefficient (and, under the assumption that new lives always increase social welfare, also P-inefficient), I characterize symmetric, P-efficient allocations as the equilibria arising from different distribution of rights among the agents, and show that many equilibria exhibiting binding constraints on transfers are P-efficient. To be more precise, except for dynamically inefficient equilibria, there is no need to alter children's rights in order to achieve efficiency.
Subjects: 
P-efficiency
Efficiency
endogenous fertility
Millian efficiency
optimal population
population principles
property rights
JEL: 
D91
H21
H5
E62
J13
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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