July 2019

05Jul

Pension Savings: The Real Return

By Ján Šebo, Ştefan Dragoş Voicu, Carsten Andersen, Aleksandra Mączyńska, Didier Davydoff, Lorenzo Marchionni, Marissa Diaz, Michal Mešťan, Lubomir Christoff, Edin Mujagić, Gabaut Laetitia, Grégoire Naacke, Johannes Hagen, Guillaume Prache, Fernando Herrero In June 2013, BETTER FINANCE published a research report entitled “Private Pensions: The Real Return” which evaluated the return of private pension products after charges, after inflation (“real” returns) and – where possible – after taxation. This first report furthermore identified the factors affecting these returns in...

July 5, 2019
Articles, Investing,
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June 2019
28Jun

The political economy of pension reform

By Sarah Brooks, Duke University, Estelle James, World Bank It has become apparent that many policies that we recommend at the Bank for technical economic reasons have not been implemented for political reasons. This discrepancy between economics and politics has led the Bank, and the academic community, to begin thinking about the political economy of reform. Considerable work has already been done on the political economy of macro-economic reform and trade policy, emphasizing factors such as incomplete information,...

June 28, 2019
Articles, Regulation, ,
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28Jun

Trends in health and retirement in Latin America: Are older workers healthy enough to extend their working lives?

By Laeticia R.De SouzaaBernardo L.QueirozbVegard F.Skirbekkc To counter the problems of demographic ageing, Latin American countries, like many nations elsewhere, are considering raising the retirement age in order to maintain fiscal balance and sustain economic prosperity. In doing so, however, they must take into account not only the simultaneous decline in older adults’ labour force participation but also poor health among those potentially affected by the change. In this paper, we use country comparable census data for 1970–2010 to...

June 28, 2019
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, ,
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28Jun

Do Immigrants Delay Retirement and Social Security Claiming?

By Mary J. Lopez, Sita Slavov As the share of older immigrants residing in the U.S. begins to rise, it is important to understand how immigrants’ retirement behavior and security compare to that of natives. This question has implications for the impact of immigration on government finances and for the retirement security of immigrants. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine how immigrants’ retirement and Social Security claiming patterns compare to those of natives....

June 28, 2019
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, ,
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28Jun

Switching Costs and Competition in Retirement Investment

By Fernando Luco How do different switching costs affect choices and competition in a private pension system? I answer this question in a setting in which variation in employment status allows me to identify two switching costs that jointly affect enrollees’ decisions: the cost of evaluating financial information and the cost of the bureaucratic process that enrollees must navigate when switching. I use this variation to estimate the different switching costs and study their impact on competition among pension...

June 28, 2019
Adequacy, Articles, Investing, System Sustainability,
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25Jun

Climate Impact Pledge: Tackling the climate emergency

By Meryam Omi Public concern about the danger posed by climate change has reached unprecedented levels. More than a million students have walked out of classes worldwide, while protests have been held across dozens of countries, to call for swift action from governments1. This is no fad. The world is truly in the midst of a climate emergency, which could have drastic consequences for markets, companies and, therefore, our clients’ assets. With the UN warning that there is little over...

June 25, 2019
Articles, Investing, Reports, System Sustainability, ,
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21Jun

The Future Shape of Insurance and Risk Management in the Cyber-Physical Space

By W. Jean Kwon For years, the insurance industry was essentially about mathematical quantification and financial transformation of physical risks. But our world has become more interconnected with the advent of the internet, blockchain etc.: as a consequence, cyber risk is expanding rapidly. Here, Prof. W. Jean Kwon looks at how the insurance industry will adapt to the “cyber-physical” world order. Source: SSRN

June 21, 2019
Articles, Pension Management, ,
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21Jun

Annuity Pricing in Public Pension Plans: Importance of Interest Rates

By Nino Abashidze, Robert L. Clark, Beth Ritter, David Vanderweide There is little systematic information on the distribution options in public sector retirement plans and how annuity options are priced relative to the standard single life annuity. This study examines the distribution options of 85 large public retirement plans covering general state employees, teachers, and local government employees. An important component of the analysis is the construction of a data set presenting the annuity options offered by each of...

June 21, 2019
Adequacy, Aging, Articles, Savings, ,
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21Jun

Social Programmes, Poverty Eradication and Labour Inclusion. Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean

By Lais Abramo, Simone Cecchini, Beatriz Morales Diverse social programmes — including conditional cash transfer programmes, labour and production inclusion programmes and social pensions — are being implemented in Latin American and Caribbean countries with the aim of ending poverty and reducing inequalities throughout the life cycle. This book offers an up-to-date analysis of these programmes and the way they relate to labour inclusion, and analyses ongoing debates regarding the possible incentives and disincentives they create in terms of...

June 21, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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14Jun

The Effects of Pension-Related Policies on Household Spending

By Susana Párraga Rodríguez This paper estimates the impact of pension-related policies on household spending. The identification strategy exploits the deviation in pensioner income and expenditure caused by the introduction of a new pension system during the 1980s and 1990s in Spain and constructs a new narrative series of legislated pension changes. I present a variety of estimates, some of them imply that increases in the average pension have a roughly one-for-one effect on pensioner spending. The strongest effects...

June 14, 2019
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