TY  - JOUR
AU  - Feldstein,Martin
AU  - Liebman,Jeffrey B.
TI  - Social Security
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8451
PY  - 2001
Y2  - September 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8451
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8451.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Martin S. Feldstein
President Emeritus
NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02138-5398
Tel: 617/868-3905
Fax: 617/868-7194
E-Mail: msfeldst@nber.org

Jeffrey B. Liebman
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-8518
Fax: 617/496-9053
E-Mail: jeffrey_liebman@harvard.edu
AB  - This paper, a forthcoming chapter in the Handbook of Public Economics, reviews the theoretical and empirical issues dealing with Social Security pensions.  The first part of the paper discusses pure pay-as-you-go plans.  It considers the effects of introducing such a plan on the present value of consumption, the optimal level of benefits in such plans, and the emprical research on the effects of pay-as-you-go pension systems on labor supply and saving. The second part of the paper discusses the transition to investment-based systems, analyzing the effect on the present value of consumption of such a transition and considering such issues as the distributional effects and risk associated with such systems.
ER  -