Abstract. This article gives exact general conditions for the existence of an interior optimum growth rate for population in the neoclassical two-generations-overlapping model.In an economy where high (low) growth rates of population lead to a growth path which is efficient (inefficient) there always exists an interior optimum growth rate for population.In all other cases there exists no interior optimum. The Serendipity Theorem, however, does in general not hold in an economy with government debt. Moreover, the growth rate for population which leads an economy with debt to a golden rule allocation can never be optimal.

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This paper relaxes the common prior assumption in the public and private information game of Morris and Shin (2000, 2004). For the generalized game, where the agent's prior expectations are heterogenous, it derives a sharp condition for the emergence of unique/multiple equilibria. This condition indicates that unique equilibria are played if player's public disagreement is substantial. If disagreement is small, equilibrium multiplicity depends on the relative precisions of private signals and subjective priors. Extensions to environments with public signals of exogenous and endogenous quality show that prior heterogeneity, unlike heterogeneity in private information, provides a robust anchor for unique equilibria. Finally, irrespective of whether priors are common or not, we show that public signals can ensure equilibrium uniqueness, rather than multiplicity, if they are sufficiently precise.