COMPLEMENTS VERSUS SUBSTITUTES AND TRENDS IN FERTILITY CHOICE IN DYNASTIC MODELS*
研究发现，若跨期替代弹性足够低，简单的Barro-Becker王朝模型能再现死亡率下降和生产率增长导致的生育率变化，这主要源于子女在父母效用中作为替代品。
Demographers emphasize decreased mortality and “economic development” as the main contributors generating the demographic transition. Contrary to previous findings, we show that simple dynastic models à la Barro–Becker can reproduce observed changes in fertility in response to decreased mortality and increased productivity growth if the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is low enough. We show that this is largely due to number and welfare of children being substitutes in the utility of parents in this case. We find that with an IES of one‐third, model predictions of changes in fertility amount to two‐thirds of those observed in U.S. data since 1800.