July 2017

16Jul

Liquidity and Solvency in Pay-as-You-Go Defined Contribution Pension Schemes: A Continuous OLG Sustainability Framework

By Jennifer Alonso-García (University of New South Wales) & Pierre Devolder (Catholic University of Louvain) Notional Defined Contribution pension schemes are defined contribution plans which are pay-as-you-go financed. From a design viewpoint, the countries where NDCs have been implemented cannot guarantee sustainability due to the choice of notional return paid to the contributions and the indexation rate paid to pensions. We study how the scheme should be designed to achieve liquidity and solvency with a limited set of assumptions in...

July 16, 2017
Articles, Pension design, Regulation, Savings,
Read more...
16Jul

How Hard Should We Push the Poor to Save for Retirement?

By Andrew G. Biggs (American Enterprise Institute) More than half of U.S. states are working to establish programs what would automatically enrollment in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) workers who are not offered a retirement plan by their employer. These programs are designed to address a perceived shortfall of retirement saving, particularly among low-wage workers who are less likely to be offered an employer-sponsored plan. But the designers of state-run auto-IRA plans fail to consider three questions: Do the poor need...

July 16, 2017
Articles, Labor Market, Management, Savings, ,
Read more...
16Jul

Policy Reflection: Letter of Credit Usage by Defined Benefit Pension Plans in Canada

By Norma L. Nielson & Peggy L. Hedges (University of Calgary) There is an argument to be made for letting corporations hold off on contributing to their employees’ defined benefit pension plans, as long as there is a guarantee the cash will come eventually. That is the reason that provincial governments began allowing creditworthy companies to instead provide a letter of credit, backed by a Canadian bank, guaranteeing the cash deposit, and secured by the company’s line of credit or...

July 16, 2017
Adequacy, Articles, Pension design, Savings, ,
Read more...
09Jul

Role of Social Security in Explaining the Rate of Saving Disparity: A Historical Study of New Zealand versus Singapore: 1960 – 1993

By Debasis Bandyopadhyay & Vera M. Chung (University of Auckland) This paper provides evidence to argue that the difference in the social security schemes of two countries may help explain the disparity in their saving rates. We examine the argument by limiting our focus to a comparison of New Zealand and Singapore for the period 1960 – 1993. We choose the period to avoid the potential impact of the major restructuring of the New Zealand Superannuation since 1994 toward a...

July 9, 2017
Articles, Labor Market, Regulation, Savings,
Read more...
09Jul

Policy Reflection: Letter of Credit Usage by Defined Benefit Pension Plans in Canada

By Norma L. Nielson & Peggy L. Hedges (University of Calgary) There is an argument to be made for letting corporations hold off on contributing to their employees’ defined benefit pension plans, as long as there is a guarantee the cash will come eventually. That is the reason that provincial governments began allowing creditworthy companies to instead provide a letter of credit, backed by a Canadian bank, guaranteeing the cash deposit, and secured by the company’s line of credit or...

July 9, 2017
Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, Regulation,
Read more...
09Jul

A Study on the Prospects and Problems of Unorganised Labours in India

By Ravindra B.K. (Alliance University), Pradeep M. D. & T. Ramjani Sab (Srinivas Institute of Management Studies) India comprises 43.7 crore people working with the skill in the residual sector as unorganized labours. Around 24.6 core engage in agriculture, 4.4 crore in construction and remaining people in the manufacturing and service sectors. This sector faces eventual deficiencies in regulations over employment, remuneration pattern, poor employer and employee relationship and casual work culture. Informal sector covers large number of workers from...

July 9, 2017
Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, Regulation,
Read more...
02Jul

Problems and demographic policies in Europe. The Role of Cities

By Gérard-François Dumont (University of Paris 4 Sorbonne) Demographic changes are often unknown because they are part of long-term logics; Yet the future of European societies is in the civil states of its various countries. In the first part, we must first analyze the general demographic changes, in particular with regard to the natural increase in Europe, and then the changes in the geography of the population linked to changes in urbanization. Knowledge of the facts will then allow us...

July 2, 2017
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
Read more...
02Jul

Income and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Singapore's First National Non-Contributory Pension

By Yanying Chen & Yi Jin Tan (Singapore Management University) Using a new monthly longitudinal survey of elderly Singaporeans, we precisely time and study the announcement and disbursement effects of an exogeneous permanent income shock on a broad range of subjective well-being domains. The source of this permanent income shock is a new means-tested non-contributory pension, the Silver Support Scheme (SSS). Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that pension recipients experienced improved life satisfaction upon announcement of the SSS; this...

July 2, 2017
Articles, Investing, Labor Market, Savings,
Read more...
02Jul

Income and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Singapore’s First National Non-Contributory Pension

By Yanying Chen & Yi Jin Tan (Singapore Management University) Using a new monthly longitudinal survey of elderly Singaporeans, we precisely time and study the announcement and disbursement effects of an exogeneous permanent income shock on a broad range of subjective well-being domains. The source of this permanent income shock is a new means-tested non-contributory pension, the Silver Support Scheme (SSS). Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that pension recipients experienced improved life satisfaction upon announcement of the SSS; this...

July 2, 2017
Articles, Investing, Labor Market, Savings,
Read more...
02Jul

PEPP – Towards a Harmonized European Legislative Framework for Personal Pensions

By Hans van Meerten & Sebastiaan Niels Hooghiemstra LL.M (Utrecht University) In the last couple of years questions arose how the PEPP should ideally be regulated and the European Commission and various interest groups, till now, have not found a solution for all possible problems in developing a common regulatory framework yet. For that purpose, this Report focused on how the PEPP could ideally be regulated. It discussed the PEPP and the PPP, how PEPPs as a ‘wrapper product’ should be...

July 2, 2017
Adequacy, Articles, Corporate Governance, Pension design, ,
Read more...