On time-consistent policy rules for heterogeneous discounting programs

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• 作者：Jean-Pierre Drugeon^a ; ^{jpdrug@parisschoolofeconomics.eu" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Bertrand Wigniolle^b
• 关键词：Time-consistent policy rules ; Heterogeneous discounting programs
• 刊名：Journal of Mathematical Economics
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：March 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：63
• 期：Complete
• 页码：174-187
• 全文大小：458 K

文摘

This article considers a new concept of social optimum for an economy populated by agents with heterogeneous discount factors. It is based upon an approach that constrains decision rules to be temporally consistent: these are stationary and unequivocally ruled by the state variable. For agents who differ only in their discount factors and have equal weights in the planner’s objective, the temporally-consistent optimal solution produces identical consumption for the agents at all time periods. In the long run, the capital stock is determined by a modified golden rule that corresponds to an average-like summation of all discount factors. The general argument is illustrated by various two-agent examples that allow for an explicit determination of the temporally consistent decision rules. Interestingly, this temporally consistent solution can be simply recovered from the characterization of a social planner’s problem with variable discounting and can also be decentralized as a competitive equilibrium through the use of various instruments.