October 2021

Effects of COVID-19 early release of pension funds: The case of Chile

By Miguel Lorca Amid the extraordinary economic effects of COVID-19, some policymakers have turned to retirement accounts to support individuals in financial hardship. Given the haste, the long-term impacts and their heterogeneity have scarcely been analyzed. Using Monte Carlo simulations on the Chilean Social Protection Survey linked with administrative data, this study quantifies the effects of a 10% early release of pension funds. Each withdrawn dollar brings losses of 1.59 dollars in future retirement savings, reducing monthly pension benefits by...

Medidas para restaurar (o no) la sostenibilidad financiera de las pensiones

Por J. Ignacio Conde Ruiz El sistema público de pensiones en España es de reparto, contributivo y de prestación definida. Que sea de reparto significa que en cada momento del tiempo los trabajadores dedican una parte de sus salarios a pagar la pensión de los actuales jubilados, es decir, su recaudación se reparte entre todos los jubilados que tienen derecho a percibir una pensión. Que sea contributivo significa que existe una correspondencia entre las cotizaciones realizadas durante la vida laboral y...

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious Aging: The Importance of an Equity Response

By Marc A. Garcia, Adriana M. Reyes & Catherine Garcia Older Black, Indigenous, and Latinx adults are at a higher risk of negative COVID-19 outcomes relative to older non-Latinx White adults. Mounting evidence regarding the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color lays bare the effects of long-standing and deeply rooted structural racism in American society. Residential and occupational segregation and unequal access to health-promoting resources such as education, income, wealth, and quality healthcare have exposed and amplified pre-existing...

Pensions and ESG: An Institutional and Historical Perspective

By P. Brett Hammond & Amy O'Brien Sustainable investing is growing into its moment. Funded pensions, which were among the first institutions to respond to sustainability concerns, are showing renewed interest in better ways to reflect responsible investing objectives, along with regulators, asset managers and shareholder groups. Looking back, the principal elements of sustainability—environmental, social and governance (ESG)—all have different origins and took different pathways. Looking across, sustainable investing developed differently depending on region and country. Viewing it today, we...

Gender Preferences in Job Vacancies and Workplace Gender Diversity

By David Card, Fabrizio Colella & Rafael Lalive In spring 2005, Austria launched a campaign to inform employers and newspapers that gender preferences in job advertisements were illegal. At the time over 40% of openings on the nation’s largest job-board specified a preferred gender. Over the next year the fraction fell to under 5%. We merge data on filled vacancies to linked employer-employee data to study how the elimination of gender preferences affected hiring and job outcomes. Prior to the...

Sustainability agreements and antitrust – three criteria to distinguish beneficial cooperation from greenwashing

By Maurits Dolmans This paper discusses European competition law as it applies to agreements between market players to reduce, eliminate, or compensate for greenhouse gas emissions. It places these in an economic context, discusses the relevant provisions of the European treaties and applicable case law of the European Court of Justice. It identifies three broad criteria for the non-application of the prohibition of restrictive agreements, or exemption, to sustainability agreements. Source: SSRN 610 views

Temporal Reframing of Recurring Savings Reduces Perceived Pain and Helps Those with Lower Financial Literacy to Save

By Stephen Shu Steve Thomas & David A. Smith While assessments of the Gig Economy vary in terms of size, growth, and heterogeneity, most studies suggest that this segment of the economy is sizeable, growing, and diverse in terms of types of work. Some concerns in the literature include both the present and future welfare of workers in the Gig Economy. More granular, temporal reframing of savings (e.g., save $5 a day versus $150 a month) has been shown to...

Income Trajectories in Later Life: Longitudinal Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

By Olivia S. Mitchell, Robert Clark, Annamaria Lusardi We examine respondents in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to observe how their financial situations unfolded as they aged. We focus on low-income older adults and follow them over time to identify the factors associated with having low income at baseline and thereafter. We find that (a) real income remained relatively stable as individuals approached and entered retirement, and progressed through their retirement years, and (b) labor force participation declined and...

September 2021

Reforming Public Sector Pensions: Solutions to a growing challenge

By Institute of Economic Affairs Submitter In its final report the Public Sector Pensions Commission finds that the true value of the main unfunded public sector pension schemes is over 40 per cent of salary. The report also finds that a lack of transparency over the true costs of public sector pensions has made it easier to delay reform in the past. Without more transparency, the true costs are unreasonably forced onto future taxpayers. Source: SSRN 1,184 views

Do Tax Deferred Accounts Improve Lifecycle Savings? Experimental Evidence

By John Duffy, Yue Li Tax deferred accounts (TDAs) are an increasingly popular method of saving for retirement, and have become common across many developed countries. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether TDAs actually improve a household's lifecycle savings behavior and retirement preparedness because it is difficult to perform a counterfactual analysis. Households always have other means of savings so there is no guarantee that a TDA, with its inflexible restriction that funds cannot be drawn until retirement, will be attractive...