April 2026
29Apr

Gambling for Retirement: The Economics of Savings Lotteries

By Jared Gars, Justin Holz, Rodemeier & Juan Miguel Villa Governments frequently use lottery-like incentives to encourage socially desirable behavior ("Pigouvian lotteries"). We study lotteries that encourage retirement savings in a nationwide field experiment with over 380,000 participants in Colombia's public pension system. Lotteries increase savings during the qualification period, but this effect is almost entirely offset by subsequent declines in savings, as workers strategically shift the timing of deposits. Lotteries also crowd out demand for valuable life and disability...

April 29, 2026
Articles, Savings, , , , ,
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29Apr

The Welfare Effects of Protecting Older Workers

By Todd Morris, Stefan Staubli & Benoit Dostie We evaluate the welfare effects of five provincial mandatory retirement bans in Canada from 2005 to 2009 using linked employer-employee tax data. The bans sharply reduce retirements at age 65, with sizable announcement effects and heterogeneity across industries. Post-65 employment and earnings rise at least 14%, with gains comparable to a two-year increase in pension-eligibility ages. Older workers save more and spouses postpone retirement, benefiting public finances, with no observable effects on...

April 29, 2026
Aging, Articles, , , ,
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29Apr

Threats of AI? Workers’ perceptions of technological change and precautionary saving behaviour

By Kun Lee, Ludivine Martin & Thuc-Uyen Nguyen-Thi Despite the extensive literature on the labour market impacts of technological change, workers’ behavioural adaptation to augmented technological risks remains relatively underexplored. In this study, we investigate workers’ perceptions of future risks posed by AI and advanced technologies and how these perceptions are causally linked with their precautionary saving behaviour. Using a novel survey of workers in Luxembourg – a country characterised by rapid technological change and dynamic labour markets – we...

April 29, 2026
Articles, Labor Market, , , ,
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17Apr

How Will AI Affect Financial Planning for Retirement?

By Luke Delorme  I recently attended a financial advisor conference focused on artificial intelligence. Drawing on what I learned, this post summarizes my thoughts on how AI may reshape financial planning for retirement savers. Spoiler alert: I think it has great potential to help both advisors and individuals. The first iteration of AI tools has already improved retirement planning. For example, forward-thinking advisors are currently using AI note-taking tools, which allow advisors to listen more closely to their clients without missing...

April 17, 2026
Articles, Pension design, , , ,
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17Apr

How we bridge the gap in climate innovation and investment in Latin America

By Georgina Mondino & Maximiliano Frey Latin America still attracts only a small share of global venture capital – just 2%– which helps explain why only five of its cities appear in StartupBlink’s latest Global Startup Ecosystem Index among the top 100 innovation hubs: São Paulo, Mexico City, Bogotá, Santiago and Buenos Aires. But the region is rich in ideas, talent and purpose-driven entrepreneurs who have already proven their ability to create value on a global scale. Over the past decade, Argentina...

April 17, 2026
Articles, Investment, , ,
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17Apr

Opt-in or Opt-out? The Power of Defaults in Pension Enrollment Choices

By Tabea Bucher-Koenen, Luisa Wallossek & Joachim Winter Default settings strongly increase pension enrollment, especially when savings incentives are high and choices are complex. We show that the effect is weaker when incentives are low, options are simple, and opting out is easy. We study the nationwide introduction of auto-enrollment for lowincome employees in Germany's public pay-as-you-go pension system. We find that automatic enrollment raises participation by 23 percentage points, though most individuals actively opt out. Linking administrative and survey data...

April 17, 2026
Articles, Pension design, , , ,
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10Apr

Communicating for action: Rewriting the social security engagement

By ISSA Social security institutions are shifting from traditional outreach into establishing leveraging communication tools and approaches that drives action from individuals. Through multi-pronged strategies they are engaging with individuals and creating meaningful connections that empower people to understand their rights, navigate services confidently, build trust and actively engage with social protection systems. Empowering individuals to know about and claim social security benefits and services is as much a delivery challenge as it is a communication one. People may have limited...

April 10, 2026
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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10Apr

Immigrants at the Margin: Labor Market Effects of the Minimum Wage

By Mark Borgschulte, Heepyung Cho & Darren Lubotsky We examine the differential effects of minimum wages on immigrant and native workers in the United States. We find that minimum wage increases lead to reduced hours of work among immigrants with no effect on their employment. The effects are concentrated among recently arrived, likely-undocumented workers in high turnover industries. Native workers show no such response, even when examining native subgroups with similar characteristics to the most affected immigrants. We conclude that...

April 10, 2026
Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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10Apr

The ESG Valuation Gap: A Comparative Study of Egyptian and Saudi Listed Companies

By Mawaheb Abdel-Aziz Ismail The study examines the value relevance of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosures and tests for crosscountry differences in its impact on perceived firm value between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It specifically investigates whether ESG data provides incremental explanatory power beyond traditional accounting measures in determining stock prices in these two distinct MENA markets. The study employs a modified Ohlson (1995) valuation model using panel data from 2021 to 2024. The empirical analysis is conducted using...

April 10, 2026
Articles, Sustainability, , , ,
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10Apr

Opt-in or Opt-out? The Power of Defaults in Pension Enrollment Choices

By Tabea Bucher-Koenen, Luisa Wallossek & Joachim K. Winter Default settings strongly increase pension enrollment, especially when savings incentives are high and choices are complex. We show that the effect is weaker when incentives are low, options are simple, and opting out is easy. We study the nationwide introduction of auto-enrollment for low-income employees in Germany's public pay-as-you-go pension system. We find that automatic enrollment raises participation by 23 percentage points, though most individuals actively opt out. Linking administrative and...

April 10, 2026
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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