Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

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The Department of Economics and Business consists of two institutes – Economics and Business with 20 chairs. It has over 30 academic staff that cover the disciplines in economics and business. The chair of public economics has a research focus on dynamic computable general equilibrium models that deal with the demographic transition and its impact on social security systems. In the past the chair has received research funds from a variety of sources – including the EU, the German Research Foundation and the Thyssen Foundation.

Key personnel involved in the project

Hans Fehr is senior researcher and coordinator of the project team.
Sabine Jokisch is post-doc researcher and will be responsible for model development.
Larry Kotlikoff is senior advisor will be involved in model development.

Main tasks attributed to them in the project

The project team will develop a multi-national dynamic overlapping generation (OLG) model. This model will take into account a variety of factors in order to quantify the economic consequences of the changing demographic within consumption demand, national production and international trade.

Hans Fehr will work on the theoretical structure of the various model extensions. He will also work on the design of the policy simulations and the interpretation of the numerical results.

Sabine Jokisch will mainly work on programming the model, she will implement the considered policy reforms and help to interpret the results. Larry Kotlikoff has the most experience in this kind of simulation approach. He will advise us how to model the various extensions of the model, how to set up interesting policy reform designs and how to interpret the numerical results.

Short profile of all personnel and previous relevant experience

Hans Fehr is Professor of Economics at the UWUERZ. He received his PhD from the University of Regensburg. His main research interests are in the field of quantitative public economics. In the past he has analyzed the economic consequences of population aging and various tax policy and social security reforms by means of CGE models with overlapping generations. His research is published in various journals including the European Economic Review, Review of Economic Dynamics, and the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.

Sabine Jokisch is currently Professor at Ulm University. She has received her PhD from the University of Wuerzburg in 2005. Research interest incl. social security and demographic change in CGE models. Papers in FinanzArchiv, National Tax Journal, Oxford Review of Economic Policy.

Laurence J Kotlikoff is Professor of Economics at Boston University. He received his BA in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973 and his PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 1977. From 1977 through 1983 he served on the faculties of economics of the University of California, Los Angeles and Yale University. In 1981-82 he was a Senior Economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Larry Kotlikoff is author or co-author of 14 books and hundreds of professional journal articles. He publishes extensively in newspapers, and magazines on issues of financial reform, personal finance, taxes, Social Security, healthcare, deficits, generational accounting, pensions, saving, and insurance. His time is provided at no cost to the project.

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