May 2018

21May

Golden Handcuffs and Corporate Innovation: Evidence from Defined Benefit Pension Plans

By Huu Nhan Duong (Monash University - Department of Banking and Finance; Financial Research Network (FIRN)), Bin Qiu (Missouri Western State University, Craig School of Business) & S. Ghon Rhee (University of Hawaii - Shidler College of Business; University of Hawaii - Department of Financial Economics and Institutions) This study takes advantage of sharply nonlinear funding rules for tax-qualified defined benefit (DB) plans to identify the effects of employees’ deferred compensation on corporate innovation. We find that firms with higher...

May 21, 2018
Articles, Pension design, ,
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21May

Reassessing Expectations for Blockchain and Development

By Michael Pisa This brief essay explores a key but often overlooked hurdle to using blockchain solutions, which is the complexity that decentralized solutions necessarily introduce. At times, the benefits of such solutions appear to exceed the added cost of complexity but often they do not. With this tradeoff in mind, the paper considers two use cases, digital ID and health supply chain management. (more…)

May 21, 2018
Articles, System Sustainability,
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21May

Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World: Working Longer

By Courtney Coile (Wellesley College; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)), Kevin S. Milligan (University of British Columbia (UBC) - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)) & David A. Wise (National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Harvard University - Harvard Kennedy School (HKS)) This is the introduction and summary to the eighth phase of an ongoing project on Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World. This project, which compares the experiences of a dozen developed countries,...

May 21, 2018
Articles, Labor Market, Regulation, Slider-Left, , ,
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14May

Retirement Really is Different

By Jeremy Cooper (Challenger Limited), Aaron Minney (Challenger Limited) & Amara Haqqani (Challenger Limited) Australia’s retirees are living longer, saving more and becoming increasingly self-reliant. Superannuation is moving from supplementing the age pension to substituting it for an increasing proportion of retirees, with only 42% of over-65s on a full age pension. This is forecast to decrease as super increasingly reduces the need for government assistance. Australia's super system is more mature than most people realise, with typical household superwealth...

May 14, 2018
Articles, Pension design,
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14May

Tax Aspect of the Mobility of Individuals and Companies within the EU

By Carlo Garbarino (Bocconi University - Department of Law) Migration has become an increasingly important phenomenon for societies, especially given its highly controversial political dimension. The complexity of the migrant integration process and its many varieties present challenges to policymakers who need high-quality information on which to base decisions. Nowhere is this necessity more pressing than in the development of relevant tax rules that meet the basic requirements of efficiency and equity. Moreover, the ascent of the so-called emerging economies...

May 14, 2018
Articles, Labor Market, ,
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14May

Endogenous Retirement Behavior of Heterogeneous Households Under Pension Reforms

By Axel H. Börsch-Supan (Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences - Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA)), Klaus Härtl (Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences - Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA)), Duarte Nuno Leite (Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy; Universidade do Porto - CEF.UP - Center for Economics and Finance at UP) & Alexander Ludwig (Goethe University Frankfurt - Research Center SAFE; University of...

May 14, 2018
Articles, Pension design, Regulation, ,
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07May

The Use of Locally Imposed Selective Taxes to Fund Public Pension Liabilities

By Thad Calabrese (New York University (NYU) - Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service) This chapter examines a growing phenomenon in pension funding in which jurisdictions enact a new selective tax or fee, or increase an existing one, to reduce unfunded pension liabilities. Selective sales tax refers to a sales tax confined to a particular commodity or a limited number of commodities, such as a tax on sales of liquor, cigarettes, gasoline, or other petroleum products. Because this...

May 7, 2018
Articles, Pension design,
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07May

Poverty in Retirement: The Long-Term Impact of Rising Economic Inequality

By David W. Rasmussen (Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy) Income inequality is exacerbated by labor market trends that increase the demand for high skill occupations and those in low skill service occupations. This hollowing out of the middle of the income distribution means that an increasing portion of households will be less prepared for retirement as they approach age 65: they will have saved less, have diminished access to define benefit pension plans, and face smaller social security...

May 7, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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07May

Designing Pension Systems with Coherent Funded Private Pillars Including Issues for Notional Defined Contribution Schemes

By William Joseph Price (World Bank) This paper reviews the factors that should guide the design of private funded pensions to create a complete pension system alongside a notional defined contribution -- or public -- component. It argues that a mix of public and private pensions is the most effective option to deliver the best combination of pension outcomes. Pension design should start with a vision for five core outcomes: coverage, adequacy, sustainability, efficiency, and security. Thinking through these outcomes...

May 7, 2018
Articles, Pension design, Savings,
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April 2018

25Apr

Do pension participants want the freedom to choose or the freedom to snooze?

By Hendrik P. van Dalen and Kène Henkens Individual freedom of choice is a much heralded and cherished principle in democracies. Milton Friedman and colleagues at his alma mater, the University of Chicago, made this a cornerstone of their belief (Friedman & Friedman, 1990). The freedom of choice is the antidote to excessive government interference and an instrument which enables people to realize their goals and discipline agents and organizations. The call for freedom is getting louder as individualization of...

April 25, 2018
Articles, Investing, OP Ed, Pension design, PPI’s original Op-Eds, Savings, Slider-Left, ,
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