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
978-3-86788-638-3
Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
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
public investment
population aging
panel cointegration

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Jäger, Philipp
Schmidt, Torsten
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI)
(wo)
Essen
(wann)
2015

DOI
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

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