Economic Policy in a Demographically Divided World

Book excerpt: Economic Policy in a Demographically Divided World contains the economic analysis of the consequences of demographic change and the diverging population developments in an interdependent world economy in particular. The global divergence in demographic developments gives rise to a myriadof economic and ethical problems. This topic is treated with the help of themathematical apparatus of neoclassical optimal growth models. The author tries to disentangle the basic policy issues of a demographically divided world, such as a selective immigration policy, sustainable patterns of international lending and borrowing, development aid, and dynamic optimal taxation. The most important feature of the book is that it brings together information and theories of fairly recent date to analyse a practical policy problem, viz. issues related to a world economy that is characterised by a demographic division. This stylised fact is hardly given some attention in current economic theory and the book contains with respect to this stylised fact some new results. Customers might benefit from the book by gaining intuition concerning principles of economic policy in a world characterised by demographic change.