November 2022
25Nov

The Financialization of U.S. Public Pensions, 1945-1974

By Sean Vanatta This article examines a major transformation public employee pension investment in the United States, from investing public funds in public infrastructure in the 1940s and 1950s, to investing public funds in private securities—corporate bonds, stocks, and mortgages—in the 1960s and 1970s. Three factors drove this change. First, in the adjacent field of professional asset management, motivated financial elites orchestrated a shift in state-level trust law, from legally-sanctioned investment lists, which encouraged amateur investment and safety, to the...

November 25, 2022
Articles, Public Pensions, System Characterization, , ,
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25Nov

PEPP: Catalyst for Pension Innovation?

By Hans van Meerten & T.J.B. Hulshoff In the past two decades, several traditional markets have been 'disrupted' by parties with new business concepts, new technology and, above all, a big focus on consumer experience. Music, video, books, taxi, hotels, banks, meal delivery; examples abound. Is the personal pension savings market up for grabs? If it is up to the EU, yes. Through new PEPP legislation. But will this actually happen? Are providers and consumers ready for this? And what...

November 25, 2022
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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25Nov

Average Retirement Savings: How Do You Compare?

By Amelia Josephson If you’re wondering what’s a normal amount of retirement savings, you’re probably one of the 60% of Americans who either don’t think their savings are on track or aren’t sure, according to the Federal Reserve’s “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2019.” Among all adults, median retirement savings are $65,000, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent data. The Federal Reserve also estimated that by retirement, that number would grow to an average...

November 25, 2022
Articles, Savings, , ,
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16Nov

Economic growth, wealth, and wellbeingIs there an intergenerational divide?

By Miguel Artola Blanco This paper reviews the main mechanisms that explain the growing divergence in economic well-being between age groups. The changing patterns in the labour market are well documented and consistently show that young workers have been negatively impacted by the reductions in relative skill premiums, the rise of new forms of contracting (part-time and freelance), and the growing weight of unemployment. Wealth inequalities are also rising, not only for the most obvious transmission channel (savings) but also...

November 16, 2022
Articles, Mercado Laboral, Mercado Laboral, , , ,
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16Nov

Financial System: Challenges and Opportunities of Digital Transformation in Mexico

By Vanessa Veintimilla Brando & Daniel Miranda Lopez This work aims to understand the implications that financial technology represents for the Mexican financial system. Considering that the adoption of new technologies in the financial system (Fintech) is increasing, a novel and complex context has arisen with diverse implications in various aspects such as education, infrastructure, and the regulatory and supervisory framework needed to ensure a healthy development of the financial system. Although it has been shown that digitization brings...

November 16, 2022
Articles, Innovation, , , ,
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11Nov

Preparing for Retirement Reforms

By Karen E. Smith, Eugene Steurele, Damir Cosic Each of the three pillars of the US retirement system—Social Security, employer pensions, and private savings—suffers from serious problems that could threaten the financial security of future retirees. Social Security is at risk of becoming insolvent. If policymakers fail to act, Social Security benefits will be cut by about 25 percent starting in 2035, and even with reform, some combination of a slowdown in benefit growth for retirees and higher taxes on...

November 11, 2022
Articles, Pension design, , , , ,
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11Nov

Cognitive Abilities, Self-Efficacy, and Financial Behavior

By Ning Tang This paper investigates the effect of cognitive abilities on financial behavior among older adults. Using the longitudinal dataset of the Health and Retirement Study, I find that cognitive abilities significantly affect financial behavior through two channels: ability and self-efficacy. People with higher cognition scores, who presumably are more capable of processing information and analyzing problems, achieve better financial outcomes. This positive association is especially strong in tasks having high demand of cognitive ability, which confirms the ability...

November 11, 2022
Aging, Articles, ,
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11Nov

Future-Proof Work? The Experiences of Gig Economy Workers in the Philippines

By Christopher Ed Caboverde & John Paul Flaminiano The COVID-19 pandemic caused massive disruptions in the job market. This also puts the "gig economy" in the spotlight since many workers are seeing it as a viable career option, and are considering leaving their 9-to-5 jobs to pursue a career there. Even before the pandemic, the gig economy forms a significant portion of the workforce in different countries. This paper aims to understand the journey and experiences of location-dependent and purely...

November 11, 2022
Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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03Nov

Older Persons’ Rights to Social Security

By Alan Gutterman Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that “[e]veryone, as a member of society, has the right to social security”, and Article 9 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (“ICESCR”) calls on States to “recognize the right of everyone to social security, including social insurance”. In its General Comment No. 19 on the right to social security released in 2008, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (“CESCR”) explained...

November 3, 2022
Aging, Articles, , ,
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03Nov

Risk Pooling and Precautionary Saving in Village Economies

By Marcel Fafchamps & Aditya Shrinivas We propose a new method to test for efficient risk pooling that allows for intertemporal smoothing, non-homothetic consumption, and heterogeneous risk and time preferences. The method is composed of three steps. The first one allows for precautionary savings by the aggregate risk pooling group. The second utilizes the inverse Engel curve to estimate good-specific tests for efficient risk pooling. In the third step, we obtain consistent estimates of households' risk and time preferences using...

November 3, 2022
Articles, Savings, , ,
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