October 2017

UK. Monarch collapse leaves yet another pension fund up in the air

Pensions are the tail wagging the economic dog – sometimes in the strangest ways. Take the high-profile collapse at Monarch Airlines. It’s a sorry story of corporate raiders facing accusations of asset-stripping one of the country’s largest holiday airline businesses and leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab. The once strong, if slightly dated, brand was taken over by private equity financiers to try to make it into another Ryanair. When that failed, it appears the owners could still walk away...

A Survey of Behavioral Finance

By Nicholas Barberis, Richard Thaler Behavioral finance argues that some financial phenomena can plausibly be understood using models in which some agents are not fully rational. The field has two building blocks: limits to arbitrage, which argues that it can be difficult for rational traders to undo the dislocations caused by less rational traders; and psychology, which catalogues the kinds of deviations from full rationality we might expect to see. We discuss these two topics, and then present a number...

How the Growing Gap in Life Expectancy May Affect Retirement Benefits and Reforms

By Alan J. Auerbach, Kerwin K. Charles, Courtney C. Coile, William Gale, Dana Goldman, Ronald Lee, Charles M. Lucas, Peter R. Orszag, Louise M. Sheiner, Bryan Tysinger, David N. Weil, Justin Wolfers, Rebeca Wong Older Americans have experienced dramatic gains in life expectancy in recent decades, but an emerging literature reveals that these gains are accumulating mostly to those at the top of the income distribution. We explore how growing inequality in life expectancy affects lifetime benefits from Social Security,...

Planning for Retirement? The Importance of Time Preferences

By Robert L. Clark, Robert G. Hammond, Christelle Khalaf, Melinda Sandler Morrill Ensuring retirement income security is a priority for individuals, employers, and policymakers. Using merged administrative and survey data for public sector workers in North Carolina, we explore how workers’ characteristics and preferences are associated with planning and saving for retirement. We then assess the “quality” of a retirement plan and whether retirement behavior is consistent with these plans. The findings indicate that the way that individuals discount future...

México. Piden a empresas dar planes privados de pensiones a trabajadores

Las empresas mexicanas son un pilar esencial para generar en los fondos de retiro un monto que cubra las necesidades de los pensionados mexicanos en el futuro, consideró Jorge López, socio fundador de Vitalis, una empresa de consultoría actuarial. El ahorro para el retiro entre los empleados del país es muy bajo, no más del 6.5% que establece el sistema de pensiones, lo que provocará que al momento de la jubilación, los rendimientos no sean mayores a 30% de su...

Teoría del Empujón Aplicado al Sistema de Pensiones en México

Richard H. Thaler, ganador del premio Nobel de Economía 2017, se basó en la influencia del proceso cognitivo conductual y las emociones humanas en la toma de decisiones económicas para elaborar “La teoría del empujón”. Thaler demuestra que impulsando a la población con pequeñas acciones, se puede llevar a las personas a tomar mejores decisiones, resultando en beneficios a largo plazo para la economía y la política. El ex primer ministro de Reino Unido, David Cameron aplicó esta teoría en el...

IMF Sees Fiscal Gap for Greece, Pension Cuts Might Come Sooner

The International Monetary Fund foresees a fiscal gap of 2.3 billion euros in the 2018 budget, which might mean that the pension cuts scheduled for January 1st, 2019 will be implemented earlier. Greek finance ministry sources downplay the IMF forecast claiming that all previous predictions by the Fund, have been overly pessimistic. However, the IMF forecast might delay the third review of the bailout program, which has to be completed by the end of the year. This generates uncertainty among...

Nigeria. Pension fund assets rise by N862bn

The latest report on the Nigerian pension fund administration, which was released on Thursday by the National Bureau of Statistics and the National Pension Commission, indicated that the country’s pension fund assets increased by N862bn to N6.164tn as of December 31, 2016. According to the report, the N6.164tn pension fund assets represent six per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, as the figure indicates an increase of N862bn when compared to the N5.302tn recorded in 2015. It stated that a...

El FMI propone que te paguen una ‘pensión’ solo por existir

El Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) lanzó la propuesta de crear una Unidad de Ingreso Universal Básico (UBI por sus siglas en inglés), para reducir la inequidad y aumentar la capacidad de crecimiento potencial de las economías. Según el FMI, dicha UBI en el caso de México, donde la aplicación de transferencias monetarias fue en el Programa de Oportunidades, “ha tenido éxito”. Tanto que, tendría un impacto fiscal anual aproximado de 3.7% del PIB para aumentar en un 25% del ingreso...

Trump health-care order could violate retirement plan law

President Donald Trump's plan to make it easier for small businesses to band together and buy stripped-down health insurance plans could violate a federal law governing employee benefit plans and will almost certainly be challenged in court, legal experts said. Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at letting small businesses join nationwide associations for the purpose of buying large-group health plans that are not subject to coverage requirements of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Industry experts said...