Jobs and chocolate: Samuelsonian surpluses in dynamic models of unemployment

Abstract

In dynamic models of unemployment in which the employed consume more than the unemployed, workers are finitely lived, and jobs are lasting, employment transfers consumption from future generations to those currently alive, resulting in a social surplus. That is, these transfers allow the current generation to consume more than its share of the output produced during its lifetime, without the increased consumption coming at the expense of future generations. Moreover, due to these intergenerational transfers, the allocation that maximizes steady-state output is Pareto dominated by another feasible allocation with a higher level of steady-state employment. © 1994 The Review of Economic Studies Limited.