Arbeitspapier
The Political Economy of Public Investment when Population is Aging – A Panel Cointegration Analysis
Time preferences vary by age. Notably, according to experimental studies, senior citizens tend to discount future payoffs more heavily than working-age individuals. Based on these findings, we hypothesize that demographic change has contributed to the cut-back in government-financed investment that many advanced economies experienced over the last four decades. We demonstrate for a panel of 13 OECD countries between 1971 and 2007 that the share of elderly voters and public investment rates are cointegrated, indicating a long-run relationship between them. Estimating this cointegration relationship via pooled dynamic OLS (D-OLS) and fully modified OLS (FM-OLS) we find a negative and significant effect of population aging on public investment. Moreover, the estimation of an error correction model reveals long-run Granger causality running exclusively from aging to investment. Our results are robust to the inclusion of additional control variables typically considered in literature on the determinants of public investment.
- ISBN
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978-3-86788-638-3
- Sprache
-
Englisch
- Erschienen in
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Series: Ruhr Economic Papers ; No. 557
- Klassifikation
-
Wirtschaft
National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: Infrastructures; Other Public Investment and Capital Stock
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-labor Market Discrimination
Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡
- Thema
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public investment
population aging
panel cointegration
- Ereignis
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (wer)
-
Jäger, Philipp
Schmidt, Torsten
- Ereignis
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Veröffentlichung
- (wer)
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Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI)
- (wo)
-
Essen
- (wann)
-
2015
- DOI
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doi:10.4419/86788638
- Handle
- Letzte Aktualisierung
-
10.03.2025, 11:42 MEZ
Datenpartner
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Objekttyp
- Arbeitspapier
Beteiligte
- Jäger, Philipp
- Schmidt, Torsten
- Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI)
Entstanden
- 2015