A társadalombiztosítás politikai gazdaságtana. A racionális magyarázatkísérletek rövid története
The political economics of the social security system. A brief history of attempts at rational explanation

Summary/Abstract: This paper provides a non-exhaustive survey of the political economy literature on intergenerational redistribution. We concentrate on the explanations of the emergence, persistence and some specific features of pay-as-you-go public pension systems. The major question of the surveyed literature is how to explain the popularity of a social security system which reduces the welfare of the median voter. After a short survey of the history of the field, we present four models which represent four distinct approaches to the problem, and belong to four different periods of the history of the research program. The studies presented here highlight the possible roles of rigid institutions, an implicit intergenerational contract, intergenerational altruism and uneven lobbying capacities in shaping modern social security systems. The major novel feature of our perspective is the strong emphasis on the analysis of empirical foundations of behavioral assumptions of political economy models.

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