Optimal Design of Means Tested Retirement Benefits
用理性代理人模型分析英国退休福利安排，发现经济状况调查（即按收入水平递减福利）能有效降低福利成本，支持米德提出的50%回收率猜想，并指出不同融资方式的扭曲效应。
Design of welfare benefits is a tricky business. In this regard, James Meade believed that it is important to avoid excessive distortions to the price of labour. He also recognised that means testing is a useful way of limiting the 'hideously expensive' cost of universal benefits provision; he conjectured that a 50% claw-back rate might be appropriate. We use a rational agent model to explore the welfare effects of alternative retirement benefits arrangements in the UK. Our analysis supports an extensive role for means testing, consistent with Meade's conjecture, and highlights the distortions associated with alternative methods of benefits financing. Copyright © The Author(s). Journal compilation © Royal Economic Society 2009.