Policy makers often call for increased spending on infrastructure, which can encompass a broad range of investments, from roads and bridges to digital networks that will expand access to high-speed broadband. Some point to the near-term macroeconomic benefits, such as job creation, associated with infrastructure spending; others point to the long-term effects of such spending on productivity and economic growth. Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment explores the links between infrastructure investment and economic outcomes, analyzing key economic issues in the funding and management of infrastructure projects. It includes new research on the short-run stimulus effects of infrastructure spending, develops new estimates of the stock of US infrastructure capital, and explores incentive aspects of public-private partnerships with particular attention to their allocation of risk. The volume provides a reference for researchers seeking to study infrastructure issues and for policymakers tasked with determining the appropriate level and allocation of infrastructure spending.

Although Japan and the United States are the world's leading economies, there are significant differences in the ways their wealth is translated into living standards. For example, average per capita living space in the United States is more than 50 percent greater than in Japan, and many more American homes are equipped with modern plumbing. Yet housing in Japan costs seven times the average Japanese income, while in the United States the cost is three times the average U.S. income. A careful comparison of housing markets illustrates not only how living standards in the two countries differ, but also reveals much about saving patterns and how they affect wealth accumulation. Ten essays, by Japanese and American scholars, discuss the evolution of housing prices, the link between housing markets and personal saving behavior, commuting, housing finance, and the impact of public policy on housing markets. The first pair of papers analyzes the source of the house price increase in Japan during the 1980s, and the corresponding determinants of house price fluctuations in the United States. The second pair discusses mortgage financing in Japan and explains the relationships between mortgages and other financial markets in the United States. The third pair examines how housing market conditions affect commuting decisions. These essays find that because housing in Tokyo is scarce, workers are forced to commute from homes in the suburbs to jobs in the city. In America, however, increasingly workers are driving from homes in one suburb to jobs in another. The fourth pair analyzes the effects of housing prices on saving. In Japan, increasing housing prices have discouraged people from saving fordown payments, while in the United States a similar increase has led to more saving by renters and more spending by homeowners. The final two papers review the impact of tax policies on housing markets. One essay finds that Japanese tax policies that discourage the conversion of agricultural land to housing create a scarcity of available land for housing, and thus drive up housing prices. An essay on the United States reviews the effects of tax reforms, inflation, and low-income housing policies since the 1970s. The first comparison of housing in the world's leading economies, this study will be useful for policymakers, economists, urban planners, housing experts, and others concerned with Japanese economy and society.

Annuity insurance products help protect retirees against outliving their incomes. Dramatic advances in life expectancy mean that today's retirees must plan on living into their eighties, their nineties, and even beyond. Longer life expectancies are the symbol of a prosperous society, but this progress also means that some retirees will need to plan conservatively and cut back substantially on their living standards or risk living so long that they exhaust their resources. This book examines the role that life annuities can play in helping people protect themselves against such outcomes. A life annuity is an insurance product that pays out a periodic amount for as long as the annuitant is alive, in exchange for a premium. The book begins with a history of life annuity markets during the twentieth century in the United States and elsewhere. It then explores recent trends in annuity pricing and money's worth, as well as the economic value generated for purchasers of these products. The book explains the potential importance of inflation-protected annuities and stock-market-linked variable annuities in providing more complete retirement security. The concluding chapters examine life annuities in various institutional settings and the tax treatment of annuity products.

Historically, tax policy debates - and reforms - have depended heavily on estimates of how alternative tax rules would affect household and firm behavior. Research showing that capital gains realizations were very sensitive to capital gains tax rates played an important role in the 1978 capital gains tax reform. The 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act was bolstered by studies suggesting that reductions in marginal tax rates would increase household labor supply and saving. In the early 1990s, federal tax policy debates focused on how raising marginal tax rates would affect household behavior and reported taxable income. Despite decades of interest by scholars and policy makers in the effect of tax policy on household behavior, there is still considerable controversy about the key empirical links among tax rates, household behavior, and revenue collections. The eight papers in this volume present new statistical findings on how taxes affect a range of household decisions, including labor supply, saving, choice of health insurance plan, choice of child care arrangements, portfolio choice, and tax evasion. They also present new analytical results on the effects of different types of tax policy. All of this research relies on household-level data - drawn either from public-use tax return files provided by the U.S. Treasury or from large household-level surveys - to explore various aspects of the relationship between taxes and household behavior.

The declining U.S. national saving rate has prompted economists and policymakers to ask, should the federal government encourage saving, and if so, through which policies? In order to better understand saving programs, this volume provides a systematic and detailed description of saving policies in the G-7 industrialized nations: the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Among the G-7 nations, household saving rates vary dramatically. The United States and United Kingdom show personal saving rates of less than 5 percent of disposable income. The rates in France and Germany are twice as much, and in Japan and Italy personal saving rates are over 15 percent of disposable income. The United States has tried to encourage saving through programs such as IRAs and 401(k) plans, while the Japanese government has recently curtailed saving incentives. The seven articles in this volume collect and analyze extensive data on government policies affecting saving in each of the G-7 countries. Each chapter focuses on one country and addresses a core set of topics: types of accumulated household saving and debt; tax policies toward capital income; saving in the form of public and private pensions, including Social Security and similar programs; saving programs that receive special tax treatment; and saving through insurance. This detailed summary of the saving incentives of the G-7 nations will be an invaluable reference for policymakers and academics interested in personal saving behavior.

Governments and corporations may chip in, but around the world household saving is the biggest factor in national saving. To better understand why saving rates differ from country to country, this volume provides the most up-to-date analyses of patterns of household saving behavior in Canada, Italy, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each of the six chapters examines micro data sets of household saving within a particular country and summarizes statistics on patterns of saving by age, income, and other demographic factors. The authors provide age-earning profiles and analyses of the accumulation of wealth over the lifetime in a clear way that allows quick comparisons of earning, consumption, and saving in the six countries. Designed as a companion to Public Policies and Household Saving (1994), which addresses saving policies in the G-7 nations, this volume offers detailed descriptions of saving behavior in all G-7 nations except France.