January 2019

14Jan

The Impact of Brexit on Central and Eastern European Security

By Valentin Naumescu (Faculty of European Studies, Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca), Agnes Nicolescu (European Institute of Romania) This article examines the impact of the Brexit process on security policy and related political discourse in Central and Eastern Europe. Developments related to the Brexit process are considered in its two-fold dimensions: direct impact, on the European Union, and indirect effect, on UK’s contribution to NATO. In this context, the article proposes a qualitative analysis of foreign policy and security national strategy...

January 14, 2019
Articles, System Sustainability, ,
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14Jan

The Course of Income Inequality As a Cohort Ages into Old-Age

By Thomas L. Hungerford (National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI); Independent)Several researchers have shown that income inequality of a cohort increases as the cohort ages. The various studies examining cohort income inequality use a variety of data, measures, and methods. Is the U.S. experience documented in other studies due to potential biases due to data, measures and/or methods? This study examines cohort income inequality using nationally representative longitudinal data and a variety of inequality measures to follow a large...

January 14, 2019
Aging, Articles, Slider-Left,
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08Jan

Social Security Reforms and the Changing Retirement Behavior in Sweden

By Marten Palme (Stockholm University - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics), Lisa Laun (IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation)We show how the economic incentives to remain in the labor force induced by Sweden’s public old-age pension system and disability insurance program have changed between 1980 and 2015. Based on earnings histories for different hypothetical individuals corresponding to groups by gender and educational attainments we calculate the following measures: the replacement rate (RR), the social...

January 8, 2019
Articles, Slider-Left
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07Jan

Reversing Pension Privatization: Rebuilding Public Pension Systems in Eastern European and Latin American Countries (2000-18)

By Isabel Ortiz (United Nations - International Labour Organization (ILO); Initiative for Policy Dialogue), Fabio Duran (International Labour Organization (ILO)), Stefan Urban (United Nations - International Labour Organization (ILO)), Veronika Wodsak (United Nations - International Labour Organization (ILO)), Zhiming Yu (International Labour Organization) From 1981 to 2014, thirty countries privatized fully or partially their public mandatory pensions; as of 2018, eighteen countries have reversed the privatization. This report: (i) analyses the failure of mandatory private pensions to improve old-age income...

January 7, 2019
Articles, Regulation, System Sustainability, , , ,
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07Jan

Government Transfers, Work and Wellbeing: Evidence from the Russian Old-Age Pension

By Louise Grogan (University of Guelph - Department of Economics) & Fraser Summerfield (University of Aberdeen - Economics; CELMR; Rimini Center for Economic Analysis (RCEA)) This paper examines the impacts of a large and anticipated government transfer, the Russian old-age pension, on labor supply, home production and subjective wellbeing. The discontinuity in eligibility at pension age is exploited for inference. The 2006-2011 Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey is employed. Causal impacts differ across the sexes. Women reduce market work and appear...

January 7, 2019
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, Regulation, , ,
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07Jan

The Populist Backlash Against Europe: Why Only Alternative Economic and Social Policies Can Stop the Rise of Populism in Europe

By Bojan Bugaric (University of Sheffield, Department of Law) The European Union is facing an unprecedented political crisis. This club of liberal and democratic countries has been confronted by a nationalist and populist backlash that threatens the core principles at the very heart of the EU. Capitalizing on the European sovereign debt crisis, the backlash against refugees streaming in from the Middle East, public angst over the growing terror threat, and Brexit, previously fringe populist political parties are growing with...

January 7, 2019
Articles, Pension design, System Sustainability, , , ,
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December 2018

16Dec

Informing Retirement Savings Decisions: A Field Experiment on Supplemental Plans

By Robert L. Clark (North Carolina State University - Poole College of Management), Robert G. Hammond (North Carolina State University), Melinda Sandler Morrill (North Carolina State University - Department of Economics), Christelle Khalaf (North Carolina State University) Although supplemental saving plans can be an important part of an individual's financial security in retirement, contribution rates remain low, particularly among those with lower salaries and less education. We report findings from an intervention that provided information on key aspects of the...

December 16, 2018
Articles, News, Pension design, Savings, Slider, Slider-Left, , , ,
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16Dec

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 these plans and how the...

December 16, 2018
Articles, Investing, Pension design, Savings, ,
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12Dec

New Data Shows Drop in Retirement Coverage for All Income Levels

New Data Shows Drop in Retirement Coverage for All Income Levels American workers’ access to retirement savings coverage is getting worse. New data show that employer-provided retirement coverage for all workers dropped 4 percentage points between 2014 and 2017 to 40%. Coverage for those nearing retirement - workers ages 55 to 64 - fell 7 percentage points to 44%. New data shows that from 2014 to 2017, no group of full-time workers saw a significant increase in coverage. And while coverage...

December 12, 2018
Articles
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11Dec

Collecting and Transferring Pension Contributions

Collecting social security contributions is an important operational issue in all types of pension system. Many regimes are plagued by poor compliance and weak, inefficient administration. Some countries have tried to introduce an automatic incentive to contribute by moving systems closer to ‘actuarial fairness’, where pension benefits are more strictly related to individual contributions. Examples include the systems of individual accounts introduced in a range of countries in Latin America and Eastern Europe. But in these regimes, collecting and...

December 11, 2018
Articles, Regulation, Savings, Supervision, , ,
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