government old age support and labor supply evidence from the old age assistance program many major government programs transfer resources to older people and implicitly or explicitly tax their labor in this paper we shed new light on the labor supply and welfare effects of such programs by investigating the old age assistance program oaa a means tested and state administered pension program created by the social security act of 1935 using newly available census data on the entire us population in 1940 we exploit the large differences in oaa programs across states to estimate the labor supply effects of oaa our estimates imply that oaa reduced the labor force participation rate among men aged 65 74 by 5 8 percentage points nearly half of its 1930 40 decline however both reduced form evidence and an estimated structural model of labor supply imply that the welfare cost to recipients of the high tax rates implicit in oaa s earnings test were small the evidence also suggests that social security could account for at least half of the large decline in late life work from 1940 to 1960

network models and financial stability abstract systemic risk is a key concern for central banks charged with safeguarding overall financial stability in this paper we investigate how systemic risk is affected by the structure of the financial system we construct banking systems that are composed of a number of banks that are connected by interbank linkages we then vary the key parameters that define the structure of the financial system including its level of capitalisation the degree to which banks are connected the size of interbank exposures and the degree of concentration of the system and analyse the influence of these parameters on the likelihood of knock on defaults first we find that the better capitalised banks are the more resilient is the banking system against contagious defaults and this effect is non linear second the effect of the degree of connectivity is non monotonic i e initially a small increase in connectivity increases the contagion effect but after a certain threshold value connectivity improves the ability of a banking system to absorb shocks third the size of interbank liabilities tends to increase the risk of knock on default even if banks hold capital against such exposures fourth more concentrated banking systems are shown to be prone to larger systemic risk all else equal in an extension to the main analysis we study how liquidity effects interact with banking structure to produce a greater chance of systemic breakdown we finally consider how the risk of contagion might depend on the degree of asymmetry tiering inherent in the structure of the banking system a number of our results have important implications for public policy which this paper also draws out

dynamics of brand competition effects of unobserved social networks brand competition is modelled using an agent based approach in order to examine the long run dynamics of market structure and brand characteristics a repeated game is designed where myopic firms choose strategies based on beliefs about their rivals and consumers consumers are heterogeneous and can observe neighbour behaviour through social networks although firms do not observe them the social networks have a significant impact on the emerging market structure presence of networks tends to polarize market share and leads to higher volatility in brands yet convergence in brand characteristics usually happens whenever the market reaches a steady state scale free networks accentuate the polarization and volatility more than small world or random networks unilateral innovations are less frequent under social networks

why political reservations many countries are amending their political systems to set aside positions to groups such as women and racial or religious minorities that are perceived as being disadvantaged using evidence from india this article assesses the case for these reservations jel h4 o15 several countries have introduced procedures either explicit quotas or forms of gerrymandering to ensure political representation of disadvantaged groups such as women or ethnic minorities in 2001 quotas for women in parliaments were in force in more than 30 countries in india seats are reserved for historically disadvantaged groups scheduled castes or sc and scheduled tribes or st in federal or state legislative assemblies and for both historically disadvantaged groups and women at all levels of the panchayat system the system of decentralized decision making on the basis of evidence accumulated about the indian experience this paper reviews the case for reservation

benefit generosity and the income effect on labour supply quasi experimental evidence this study uses an unanticipated exogenous doubling of the legal minimum pension in ukraine as a unique quasi experiment to evaluate the income effect on various aspects of labour supply among the elderly in contrast to previous studies the unusually simple pension eligibility rule allows estimating a pure causal income effect applying reduced form difference in differences and regression discontinuity as well as instrumental variable methods on two nationally representative data sets yields a retirement semi elasticity of 0 1 0 2 men and women respond at different margins of labour supply but with similar overall effect

the effect of old age assistance on retirement abstract researchers have devoted considerable attention to analyzing the impact of social security on retirement with mixed findings however the means tested program old age assistance oaa dwarfed social security until the 1950s and coincided with the early decline in elderly labor force participation also oaa benefits were determined by the states a key source of policy variation i estimate the relationship between oaa benefits and elderly participation using individual data from the 1940 and 1950 censuses oaa s impact is found to be strong and implies that participation would have risen slightly instead of falling if benefits had not increased during the 1940s

the effect of social security on retirement in the early 1970s we analyze detailed longitudinal data on a cohort of males aged 58 67 in 1969 1973 a period of substantial increases in real social security benefits we find the following 1 the accelerating decline in labor force participation of elderly men in 1969 1973 can be explained by the large increase in real social security benefits 2 there is evidence of a liquidity constraint effect for an important subgroup of the elderly 3 the magnitude of this induced retirement effect is large enough that ignoring it can lead to serious underestimation of the fiscal implications of changes in benefit provisions our results are interpreted in the historical context of a particular cohort undergoing major unanticipated transfers of wealth the steady state effects of social security on retirement may not be the same

a representative consumer theory of the logit model the log it model is usually derived from a discrete choice approach with stoc hastic utilities it is shown here that the logit demand system may also be derived from the maximization of a deterministic entropy type utility the latter may be interpreted as the preference function of a representative consumer with variety seeking behavior this altern ative view suggests a generalization of the standard logit which allo ws total demand to be determined endogenously copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the politics of public good provision evidence from indian local governments this paper uses village and household survey data from south india to examine how political geography and politician identity impacts on public good provision we provide evidence that the nature of this relationship varies by type of public good for high spillover public goods residential proximity to elected representative matters in contrast for low spillover public goods sharing the politician s group identity is what matters jel d78 h40

discrimination social identity and durable inequalities what are the mechanisms by which societal discrimination affects individual achievement and why do the effects of past discrimination endure once legal barriers are removed we report the findings of two experiments in village india that suggest that the mechanisms of discrimination operate in part within the individuals who are members of the groups who have been discriminated against we demonstrate that publicly revealing an individual s membership in such a group alters his behavior in ways that make the effects of past discrimination persist over time a growing literature in social psychology on stereotype threat finds that stereotyped based expectations affect individual performance in the domain of the stereotype a study by jeff stone et al 1999 is illustrative when college students were asked to perform a task described as diagnostic of natural athletic ability blacks stereotyped as better athletes but worse students than whites performed better than whites when the same test was presented as diagnostic of sports intelligence the performance of blacks declined that of whites improved and the racial gap was reversed evidence suggests that a mediating factor in stereotype threat is a change in self confidence mara cadinu et al 2005 in our studies we investigated whether the public revelation of social identity caste affects cognitive task performance and responses to economic opportunities by young boys in village india subjects were sixth and seventh graders drawn from the two ends of the caste hierarchy we asked subjects to learn and then perform a task under incentives and we manipulated whether their peers in the experimental session knew their caste caste is well suited to this manipulation because unlike race gender and ethnicity there are no unambiguous outward markers of caste among young boys six subjects generally from six different villages participated in each experimental session in the control condition the subjects were anonymous within the six person group in the experimental conditions the experimenter publicly revealed subjects names and caste in the task solving mazes in which performance was studied here the low caste subjects in the anonymous condition did not perform significantly differently from high caste subjects but when caste identity was publicly revealed in a mixed caste group a significant caste gap emerged the caste gap was due to a 20 percent decline in the average number of mazes solved by the low caste the study shows that publicly revealing the social identity of an individual can change his behavior even when that information is irrelevant to payoffs our results are a generalization of the literature on stereotype threat like that literature we find that individuals performance is more in accordance with the stereotype of the group when group membership is made salient in some way unlike that literature salience in our experiments depends on the public revelation of social identity and more importantly we do not argue that the domain of the tasks undertaken by discussants rachel croson university of pennsylvania iris bohnet harvard university stefano dellavigna university of california berkeley

did soviet elderly employment respond to financial incentives evidence from pension reforms abstract this study answers the open question of whether workers respond to financial incentives in a command economy to do this i evaluate pension reforms in soviet russia in 1964 and 1969 that allowed pensioners to receive a greater share of their pensions if they worked resulting in a progressive elimination of benefit reduction rates variation in group eligibility and variation in benefit reduction rates in eastern and western regions allow for the use of several difference in differences frameworks i collect and digitize novel data from the soviet archives on pensioner employment constructing the first database of the soviet old age labor market i find that soviet pensioners are responsive to financial incentives by 1969 after the benefit reduction rate fell from an average of 47 8 to 24 1 pensioner employment rates rose by 5 7 percentage points representing a 47 increase finally i provide illustrative estimates of the employment elasticity with respect to the average net of tax rate that range from 0 6 to 1 4

an experiment on risk taking and evaluation periods does the period over which individuals evaluate outcomes influence their investment in risky assets results from this study show that the more frequently returns are evaluated the more risk averse investors will be the results are in line with the behavioral hypothesis of myopic loss aversion which assumes that people are myopic in evaluating outcomes over time and are more sensitive to losses than to gains the results have relevance for the equity premium puzzle and also for the marketing strategies of fund managers

can mandated political representation increase policy influence for disadvantaged minorities theory and evidence from india accountable governments often fail to reflect the interests of disadvantaged minorities this paper exploits the institutional features of political reservation as practiced in indian states to examine the role of mandated political representation in providing disadvantaged groups influence over policy making ifind that political reservation has increased transfers to groups which benefit from the mandate this finding also suggests that complete policy commitment may be absent in democracies as is found in this case jel d72 d78 hl 1 h50

own company stock in defined contribution pension plans a takeover defense abstract if managers induce employees to hold company stock in defined contribution pension plans as a form of takeover defense then changes in state laws that enhance managerial protection should lead to a reduction in employer stock in 401 k plans delaware s mid 1990s validation of the poison pill in conjunction with a staggered board was followed by a significant decline in employee ownership within defined contribution plans for firms incorporated in delaware evidence using governance data suggests that this is due to responses of firms with staggered boards binary choice models confirm that employee ownership in defined contribution plans lowers takeover probabilities

why are similar workers paid differently the role of social networks abstract we provide a matching model where identical workers are embedded in ex ante identical social networks job arrival rate is endogenous and wages are bargained we study the evolution of networks over time and characterize the equilibrium distribution of unemployment rates across networks within our framework wage dispersion arises endogenously as the consequence of the dynamics of networks firms strategies and wage bargaining we show that networks induce new search externalities which shape the dynamics of the labor market our endogenous framework allows us to quantify these effects

the effect of social security on labor supply a cohort analysis of the notch generation this article uses aggregate birth year calendar year level data derived from the current population survey cps to estimate the effect of social security wealth on the labor supply of older men in the 1970s and 1980s the analysis focuses on measuring the impact of the 1977 amendments to the social security act which created a substantial unanticipated reduction in social security wealth for individuals born after 1916 this differential in benefits has become known as the benefit notch results indicate that labor supply continued to decline for the notch babies who received lower social security benefits than earlier cohorts

old age benefits and retirement decisions of rural elderly in brazil abstract i estimate the impact of social security benefits on retirement decisions of rural workers by studying changes in the rules governing old age benefits for rural workers in brazil i focus on a reform implemented in 1991 which reduced the minimum eligibility age increased benefits and extended the program to non heads of households because those benefits come with no strings attached they are not means or retirement tested any behavioral response is a pure income effect the main finding of the paper is that access to old age benefits is a strong determinant of retirement of rural workers in brazil receiving old age benefits increases the probability of not working by about thirty eight percentage points and reduces total hours per week by 22 h

the health and earnings of rejected disability insurance applicants applicants for social security disability benefits who fail to pass the medical screening form a natural control group for beneficiaries data drawn from the 1972 and 1978 surveys of the disabled done for the social security administration show that fewer than 50 percent of rejected male applicants work typical earnings of those that do are less than 59 percent of median earnings for other men their age these data cast doubt on recent econometric work that suggests that the disincentive effects of the social security disability program have been substantial copyright 1989 by american economic association

network structure and n dependence in agent based herding models abstract we derive microscopic foundations for a well known probabilistic herding model in the agent based finance literature while the model is quite robust with respect to behavioral heterogeneity the network structure describing the very feasibility of agent interaction turns out to have a crucial and non trivial impact on the macroscopic properties of the model

the spillover effects of affirmative action on competitiveness and unethical behavior we conduct an artefactual field experiment to examine various spillover effects of affirmative action policies in the context of castes in india we test a if individuals who enter tournaments in the presence of affirmative action policies remain competitive after the policy has been removed and b whether having been exposed to the policy generates unethical behavior and spite against subjects from the category who has benefited from the policy we find that these policies substantially increase the confidence and the competitiveness of the backward caste members however we find no spillover effect on confidence and competitiveness once affirmative action is withdrawn any gain in competitiveness due to the policy is then entirely wiped out furthermore the strong existing bias of the dominant category against the backward category is not significantly aggravated by affirmative action except when individuals learn that they have lost the previous competition

distinguishing income from substitution effects in disability insurance a set of studies conducted over the last 15 years has produced a near consensus that the social security disability insurance system ssdi has substantial disincentive effects on the labor supply of near elderly males diminishing labor force participation increasing the sensitivity of labor force exit decisions to adverse economic shocks and encouraging those nearing retirement to claim disability benefits and subsequently transfer into the social security retirement program yet efforts by the social security administration ssa to encourage labor supply among the disabled by removing the work disincentives built into ssdi have been almost entirely unsuccessful most notably in 1999 congress authorized the ticket to work program which provides an array of inducements for current ssdi beneficiaries to take up employment including permitting a trial work period of up to nine months providing 7 75 years of ongoing medicare eligibility following return to work and providing three years of automatic benefit reinstatement when claimants workplace earnings fall below a threshold level each of these steps reduces the implicit tax placed on labor supply by the ssdi program despite these lures fewer than 1 400 0 01 percent of the 12 2 million tickets issued to date have led to successful workforce integration autor and duggan 2006

marginal contribution reciprocity and equity in segregated groups bounded rationality and self organization in social networks we study the formation of social networks that are based on local interaction and simple rule following agents evaluate the profitability of link formation on the basis of the myerson shapley principle that payoffs come from the marginal contribution they make to coalitions the np hard problem associated with the myerson shapley value is replaced by a boundedly rational spatially myopic process agents consider payoffs from direct links with their neighbours level 1 which can include indirect payoffs from neighbours neighbours level 2 and up to m levels that are far from global agents dynamically break away from the neighbour to whom they make the least marginal contribution computational experiments show that when this self interested process of link formation operates at level 2 neighbourhoods agents self organize into stable and efficient network structures that manifest reciprocity equity and segregation reminiscent of hunter gather groups a large literature alleges that this is incompatible with self interested behaviour and market oriented marginality principle in the allocation of value we conclude that it is not this valuation principle that needs to be altered to obtain segregated social networks as opposed to global components but whether it operates at level 1 or 2 of social neighbourhoods remarkably all m 2 neighbourhood calculations for payoffs leave the efficient network structures identical to the case when m 2

economics and identity this paper considers how identity a person s sense of self affects economic outcomes we incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior in the utility function we propose identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave we then construct a simple game theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions the paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace the economics of poverty and social exclusion and the household division of labor in each case the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis

the effects of a non contributory pension program on labor force participation the case of 70 y mas in mexico abstractwe estimate the effect of 70 y mas an age conditioned cash transfer program for individuals age 70 and older in rural mexico on the labor force participation of beneficiaries and of younger individuals who live with them using data from the 2010 mexican census we exploit the age and locality population thresholds to identify the effects of the program which at the time operated only in localities with less than 30 000 inhabitants we find that the program reduces the labor force participation of elderly men particularly those who live alone and who are relatively poor but has a much weaker effect on that of elderly women the program has no statistically significant effect on the labor force participation of either prime age men or women who live with potential beneficiaries and it has a negative and significant effect on the labor force participation of boys age 12 17 particularly those in the lowest wealth quintiles but not on that of same age girls these results suggest that the prog

differences in dynamic brand competition across markets an empirical analysis we investigate differences in the dynamics of marketing decisions across geographic markets empirically we begin with a linear quadratic game involving forward looking firms competing on prices and advertising based on the corresponding markov perfect equilibrium we propose estimable econometric equations for demand and marketing policy our model allows us to measure empirically the strategic response of competitors along with economic measures such as firm profitability we use a rich dataset that combines sales marketing mix factor cost and advertising cost data for eighteen geographic markets in the frozen entree category we find that larger markets tend to be less price sensitive and more profitable than smaller markets we also find evidence of positive carryover of own advertising on own demand in terms of consumer substitution patterns we find that the role of advertising in our data seems to be more category building complementary than share stealing competitive the complementary role is stronger in larger markets on the supply side we find that firms make smaller adjustments to own advertising as goodwill goes up consistent with cross advertising effects on demand firms make smaller larger adjustments to advertising in response to competitive goodwill in the less competitive larger in the more competitive smaller markets finally we find that consumer welfare decreases increases in larger smaller markets when firms move to a zero advertising regime

credit chains and bankruptcy propagation in production networks abstract we present a simple model of a production network in which firms are linked by supplier customer relationships involving extension of trade credit our aim is to identify the minimal set of mechanisms which reproduce qualitatively the main stylized facts of industrial demography such as firms size distribution and at the same time the correlation over time and across firms of output growth and bankruptcies the behavior of aggregate variables can be traced back to the direct firm firm interdependence in this paper we assume that the number of firms is constant and the network has a periodic static structure but the framework allows further extensions to investigate which network structures are more robust against domino effects and if the network is let to evolve in time which structures emerge spontaneously depending on the individual strategies for orders and delivery

housing demand in the united states in the late nineteenth century evidence from the commissioner of labor survey 1889 1890 abstract this paper examines homeownership and housing demand for a sample of approximately 6800 urban industrial workers in the united states for the period 1889 1890 using data from the sixth and seventh annual reports of the u s commissioner of labor tenure choice and renter demand equations are estimated using both permanent and current income data limitations did not permit estimation of owner demand the results indicate lower homeownership rates among american workers circa 1890 than later and significant effects on ownership of income age of household head region industry occupation ethnicity and family size and composition rental prices and value rent ratios had effects in the expected directions partial and full elasticities calculated for renter demand reveal downward biases if only current income is used to estimate housing demand comparisons of these historical data to contemporary housing information reveal greater similarities to present day developing nations than to recent u s data the results indicate that modern housing demand theory performs well with historical data

pensions and retirement evidence from union army veterans i investigate the factors that fostered rising retirement rates prior to social security and most private sector pensions by estimating the income effect of the first major pension program in the united sates that covering union army veterans the elasticity of nonparticipation with respect to union army pension income was 0 73 the findings suggest that secularly rising income explains a substantial part of increased retirement rates comparisons with elasticities of nonparticipation with respect to social security income suggest that the elasticity of labor force nonparticipation may have decreased with time perhaps because of the increasing attractiveness of leisure

network structure and the diffusion of knowledge this paper models knowledge diffusion as a barter process in which agents exchange different types of knowledge this is intended to capture the observed practice of informal knowledge trading agents are located on a network and are directly connected with a small number of other agents agents repeatedly meet those with whom direct connections exist and trade if mutually profitable trades exist in this way knowledge diffuses throughout the economy we examine the relationship between network architecture and diffusion performance we consider the space of structures that fall between at one extreme a network in which every agent is connected to n nearest neighbours and at the other extreme a network with each agent being connected to on average n randomly chosen agents we find that the performance of the system exhibits clear small world properties in that the steady state level of average knowledge is maximal when the structure is a small world that is when most connections are local but roughly 10 percent of them are long distance the variance of knowledge levels among agents is maximal in the small world region whereas the coefficient of variation is minimal we explain these results as reflecting the dynamics of knowledge transmission as affected by the architecture of connections among agents

spite and development in a wide variety of settings spiteful preferences would constitute an obstacle to cooperation trade and thus economic development this paper shows that spiteful preferences the desire to reduce another s material payoff for the mere purpose of increasing one s relative payoff are surprisingly widespread in experiments conducted in one of the least developed regions in india uttar pradesh in a one shot trust game the authors find that a large majority of subjects punish cooperative behavior although such punishment clearly increases inequality and decreases the payoffs of both subjects in experiments to study coordination and to measure social preferences the findings reveal empirical patterns suggesting that the willingness to reduce another s material payoff either for the sake of achieving more equality or for the sake of being ahead is stronger among individuals belonging to high castes than among those belonging to low castes because extreme social hierarchies are typically accompanied by a culture that stresses status seeking it is plausible that the observed social preference patterns are at least partly shaped by this culture thus an exciting question for future research is the extent to which different institutions and cultures produce preferences that are conducive or detrimental to economic development

supermarket competition the case of every day low pricing every day low pricing edlp strategy has proved to be a successful innovation resulting in higher profits to supermarkets adopting it in competition with promotional pricing promo conventional wisdom attributes this success either to lower costs or to edlp better serving time constrained consumers while discouraging cherry pickers who seek promotions however it is unclear that such cost savings are being fully realized since edlp stores also engage in price promotions also continued existence of promo stores means that costs are not the only factor and they compete effectively without relying just on the cherry pickers furthermore experimental evidence suggests that a supermarket cannot obtain higher profits by merely setting constant low prices leading to the question exactly what makes edlp successful this question is of particular relevance to both academics and practitioners who have been intrigued by the success of this retailing strategy more generally the retailing issues addressed in this paper the economic analysis of competition and the empirical findings should be of interest to the broader community of researchers and managers we investigate the factors contributing to edlp s success by analyzing the competition between supermarkets through a game theoretic analysis of a market consisting of both time constrained consumers and cherry pickers key features of our model are consumers shop and purchase a basket of goods based on price announcements by stores and rational expectations of unannounced prices stores carry more than one good and compete through prices service convenience and appropriate communication strategies and no exogenous cost asymmetries we derive the conditions under which retailers choosing different strategies edlp and promo is a perfect nash equilibrium our analysis shows that the edlp store s offering of constant every day low prices is an equilibrium outcome endogenously determined successful implementation of the edlp strategy involves communication of relative basket prices implying that merely setting constant low prices is not viable we further demonstrate that while time constrained consumers find every day low prices at edlp attractive and cherry pickers the promotions at promo clientele effects are in fact more complicated specifically in equilibrium the promo store offers a higher service level as desired by time constrained consumers and the edlp store a lower service level in keeping with the needs of cherry pickers this choice of service by the two stores results in a cleaner segmentation of the market the higher relative basket price and service at the promo store results in a larger base of time constrained consumers to shop at the promo store and a larger base of cherry pickers to shop at the edlp store even though some cherry pickers continue to visit the promo store to avail of the price specials in this way our results contradict the conventional wisdom on edlp strategy as being mainly geared towards time constrained consumers finally industry profits are higher in an edlp promo equilibrium than when stores adopt identical strategies our analysis and results also offer a more complete characterization of the edlp and promo strategies indeed we show that edlp and promo strategies are positioning strategies rather than merely pricing strategies with different elements price promotions service and communications while the edlp store uses basket prices to attract both segments the promo store uses service and price specials to compete in the time constrained and cherry picking segment respectively given these different approaches of the two stores the communication strategies of the edlp and the promo stores emphasize these differences as well in this way we show as suggested by corstjens and corstjens 1994 that positioning in a retail context involves developing multidimensional strategies appealing to all segments while each element of the strategy may focus on a different consumer segment this is in contrast to the traditional view of segmentation in which different products in a product line for example are designed to appeal to different segments we complete the analysis by examining the data from the trade press and a survey conducted in a major metropolitan area these data while limited in scope support our theoretical results

the impact of social structure on economic outcomes s ocial structure especially in the form of social networks affects economic outcomes for three main reasons first social networks affect the flow and the quality of information much information is subtle nuanced and difficult to verify so actors do not believe impersonal sources and instead rely on people they know second social networks are an important source of reward and punishment since these are often magnified in their impact when coming from others personally known third trust by which i mean the confidence that others will do the right thing despite a clear balance of incentives to the contrary emerges if it does in the context of a social network economists have recently devoted considerable attention to the impact of social structure and networks on the economy for example see the economists chapters in rauch and casella 2001 and the illuminating review essay of this volume by zuckerman 2003 as well as dutta and jackson 2003 and calvoarmengol 2004 however i focus here on sociologists contributions sociologists have developed core principles about the interactions of social structure information ability to punish or reward and trust that frequently recur in their analyses of political economic and other institutions i begin by reviewing some of these principles building on these i then discuss how social structures and social networks can affect economic outcomes like hiring price productivity and innovation

explaining the wealth holdings of different cohorts productivity growth and social security in this paper we explore the reasons why different generations accumulate different amounts of wealth we use basic economic theory to propose two indicators of the economic conditions under which households accumulate wealth the first one represents productivity differences across cohorts the aggregate level of gross national product per capita around the time the head of the household entered the labor market the second measure summarizes the changes in social security during the head of household s working life using panel data from the dutch socio economic panel we show that productivity growth can explain all the cohort effects present in income data while productivity growth and the generosity of social security can explain all the cohort effects present in household net worth we also find a limited offset of social security on wealth holdings