Annuities, public policy and demographic change in overlapping generations models

This thesis consists of three substantially independent parts. In the first part we take the assumption of perfect life-insurance markets by the horns and develop a model in which we study the consequences of imperfect annuity markets and use the model to study the effects of different types of taxation and to study how the pension system moderates the impact of a demographic shock. In the second part we return to the theme of annuity markets but ask whether annuities are desirable in the first place. In the final part we focus once more on the impact of demographic changes by studying the different impact of changes in the population growth rate driven by either a change in the birth rate, a change in the mortality rate or a combination of the two.