期刊名称：CORE Discussion Papers / Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
出版年度：2010
卷号：2010
期号：1
出版社：Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
摘要：An early death is, undoubtedly, a serious disadvantage. However, the compensation of short-lived
individuals has remained so far largely unexplored, probably because it appears infeasible. Indeed,
short-lived agents can hardly be identified ex ante, and cannot be compensated ex post. We argue
that, de- spite the above difficulties, a compensation can be carried out by encouraging early
consumption in the life cycle. In a model with heterogeneous preferences and longevities, we show
how a specific social criterion can be derived from intuitive principles, and we study the
corresponding optimal policy under various informational assumptions. We also study the robustness
of our solution to alternative types of preferences and savings policies.
