March 2026
06Mar

The Impact of Pension System Reforms on Elderly Labor Force Participation: A Comparative Study of Germany, the United States, and Brazil

By Amos Kupaza Objective: This study provides the first harmonized, micro‑level comparative analysis of pension reform effects on elderly labor force participation in three paradigmatic welfare regimes: Germany (coordinated market economy, conservative‑corporatist welfare), the United States (liberal market economy, liberal welfare), and Brazil (dualistic economy, conservative‑informal welfare). We test the institutional mediation hypothesis: that reform effects are systematically shaped by labor market structures, social protection arrangements, and production regimes. Methods: We employ harmonized microdata from IPUMS-CPS (USA) and IPUMS-International (Germany, Brazil) , comprising 495,000 person‑year observations spanning 2000–2023....

March 6, 2026
Articles, Labor Market, , , , , , ,
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06Mar

Managing Retirement Risk: Policy Choices in Pension Fund Administration

By Fawaz Adediran & Oluwatobiloba Yomi-Oshatimi This article critically examines the legal and institutional framework governing pension administration and Pension Fund Administrators in Nigeria under the Pension Reform Act 2014. It analyses the structure of the contributory pension scheme, focusing on the statutory separation between Pension Fund Administrators and Pension Fund Custodians as well as the fiduciary obligations imposed on administrators, and the supervisory mandate of the National Pension Commission. The study situates Nigeria's pension reforms within the broader global...

March 6, 2026
Articles, Pension Management, , , ,
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06Mar

War and Digital Financial Inclusion: Role of Digital Financial Services in War and Armed Conflict

By Peterson K Ozili This article explores the trend in digital financial inclusion during war. It also explores the importance and challenges of digital financial inclusion during war. War and armed conflict adversely affect people. Their struggle to survive the war becomes even more difficult when they are unable to visit a bank branch to access formal financial services during war due to lockdowns and curfews that lead to the closure of physical financial access points. This study gathers insights...

March 6, 2026
Articles, System Characterization, , ,
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February 2026
27Feb

The modality of pension information matters: The effects of visualization and interactivity

By Kristjan Pulk, Kristian Pentus, Leonore Riitsalu, Leo Daniel Sipria, Robin Talisaar & Ene Tubelt A significant barrier to pension engagement is a lack of awareness about the pension system and contribution options. Pension information is often presented as complicated text, which can deter engagement. We test how different modalities of visual and interactive pension communication affect individuals’ subjective pension knowledge, assessment of pension sufficiency, information search, and pension decision intentions. We do so by conducting two experiments: an online experiment...

February 27, 2026
Articles, Pension design,
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27Feb

Fairness Views, Pension Benefits, and Heterogeneity in Life Expectancy

By Maria Chaykina Notional Defined Contribution (NDC) pension schemes convert accumulated pension wealth into an annuity, based on an average life expectancy at retirement. When longevity differs across social groups, a single conversion factor implies systematic transfers from shorter-lived to longer-lived individuals. This motivates proposals to differentiate benefits by socio-demographic characteristics related to life expectancy. We study whether such differentiation is perceived as fair using a survey experiment involving 3,004 Italian residents aged 18-66. Respondents completed an incentivised allocation task...

February 27, 2026
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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27Feb

Population Aging and Pension Reforms in China

By Boele Bonthuis, Yongquan Cao & Christoph Freudenberg China is experiencing rapid population aging and a declining workforce, posing significant economic and fiscal challenges, especially to the pension system. This paper examines the evolution of China’s pension system, assesses its gaps relative to international peers, and evaluates the macro-fiscal implications of population aging and various pension reforms. Using a calibrated overlapping generations model that explicitly incorporates the rural–urban disparities, we project that population aging alone can slow annual GDP growth by...

February 27, 2026
Aging, Articles, System Sustainability, , ,
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20Feb

Impact of iImmigration on the Japanese Economy: A Multi-Country Simulation Model

By Manabu Shimasawa To quantify the impacts of immigration and fiscal reconstruction on the Japanese economy, we present a dynamic computable general equilibrium OLG model with an overlapping generations structure. We use a total of 16 countries and regions, both including those that are industrialized, such as Japan, the US, and the EU, and developing countries, such as China, Brazil, the Philippines, and Peru. Our simulation results show that a permanent immigration flows of 150,000 will improve the Japanese economy and...

February 20, 2026
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20Feb

Retirement Under Policy Uncertainty

By Piera Bello, Vincenzo Galasso & Alessandro Izzo This paper examines how policy uncertainty influences retirement decisions. We develop a simple model in which individuals face a one-time choice between immediate retirement and continued employment until the statutory retirement age. In the absence of policy uncertainty, retirement decisions depend solely on the standard income–leisure trade-off. When future pension reforms are uncertain, however, individuals also take into account the perceived risk of increases in the retirement age or reductions in benefit...

February 20, 2026
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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20Feb

The Shift from Traditional Pensions to 401(k)s: Retirement Risks and the Timing of Retirement

By Rosemary Kaiser, Xiaohui sun & Yang Xuan U.S. retirement plans have shifted sharply from defined benefit to defined contribution setups. How has this change affected retirement and savings behavior? We develop a quantitative life-cycle model where retirement plans differ in their exposure to longevity and investment risk. Holding the present-value cost of benefits fixed, these differences generate distinct savings and retirement incentives across plan types. The model replicates observed differences in savings and retirement behavior and implies that the...

February 20, 2026
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06Feb

Public Pensions and the Strategic Timing of Formal Employment

  By Diego Vera Cossio, Mariano Bosch, Jonathan M. Leganza, Tatiana Mojica & María Laura Oliveri We study how public pensions impact lifecycle labor supply decisions. Our analysis centers on pension eligibility rules in Ecuador. We first use administrative data to document and unpack retirement spikes at eligibility ages. Next, we use survey data and regression discontinuity to investigate whether eligibility rules influence earlier-inlife decisions about when to work formally versus informally. We find discontinuous increases in transitions to formal employment...

February 6, 2026
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