January 2018

Confidence in Retirement – How well are Kenyans prepared for retirement?

By Strathmore University The purpose of this study is to assess and evaluate the views and attitudes of working age Kenyans who are members of a registered workplace pension schemes. The study reveals the extent in which different factors influence individual’s level of optimism or pessimism about retirement as well as Kenyans actions to prepare for retirement. (more…)

Understanding Earnings, Labor Supply, and Retirement Decisions

By Xiaodong Fan (University of New South Wales (UNSW)), Ananth Seshadri (University of Wisconsin - Madison - Department of Economics) & Christopher Taber (National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); University of Wisconsin - Madison) We develop and estimate a model in which individuals make decisions on consumption, human capital investment, labor supply, and retirement. Unlike all previous work, our model allows both an endogenous wage process (which is typically assumed exogenous in the human capital and earnings dynamics literature). In...

Work-Life Balance and Labor Force Attachment at Older Ages

By Marco Angrisani (Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR)), Maria Casanova (University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Department of Economics) & Erik Meijer (University of Southern California; RAND Corporation) We use data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine the role of work-life balance (WLB) as a nonmonetary determinant of retirement transitions, conditional on job attributes such as hours of work, compensation and benefits. We show that low levels of WLB are significantly associated with subsequent reductions...

A European Pensions Union: Towards a Strengthening of the European Pension Systems

By Pascal Borsjé (Clifford Chance LLP) & Hans van Meerten (Utrecht University - Utrecht Centre for Shared Regulation and Enforcement in Europe – RENFORCE) This contribution will especially address the EC’s general policy in respect of the IORP II Proposal, also in connection with general more recent EU law developments, and its consequences for the pension systems of the EU Member States, with a focus on the occupational pension system of the Netherlands. (more…)

The Devil You Know: A Survey Examining How Retail Investors Seek Out and Use Financial Information and Investment Advice

By Christine Sgarlata Chung (Albany Law School) Everyday, people across the United States make decisions that will affect their financial futures — e.g., borrowing money to buy a house, go to college, or start a business; investing in the stock market to save for retirement; using check cashing services or payday lenders rather than accounts at banks or credit unions for day-to-day banking needs, and the like. Traditional tenets of financial economics and investment theory assume that people make fully...

Simulating Pension Income Scenarios with Pencalc: An Illustration for India’s National Pension System

By Renuka Sane (Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi) & William Joseph Price (World Bank) This paper sets out initial results from a new modeling exercise for Defined Contribution (DC) pensions. It develops a package called penCalc based on the open source software language R, which is popular in the academic and modeling communities. All the coding is made freely available. The tool is illustrated for India's DC National Pension System. The aim is not to present the perfect model for...

Simulating Pension Income Scenarios with Pencalc: An Illustration for India's National Pension System

By Renuka Sane (Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi) & William Joseph Price (World Bank) This paper sets out initial results from a new modeling exercise for Defined Contribution (DC) pensions. It develops a package called penCalc based on the open source software language R, which is popular in the academic and modeling communities. All the coding is made freely available. The tool is illustrated for India's DC National Pension System. The aim is not to present the perfect model for...

The Standard of Living: Incomes, Wages and Lending in Regions

By Alexandra Burdyak (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) - Institute for Social Analysis and Prediction) & Elena E. Grishina (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) - Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting) In January–October 2017, households’ real disposable cash income fell by 1.3% as compared to the relevant period of 2016. It is noteworthy that real accrued wages rose by 3.0%, while the real size of assigned pensions, by 3.9%. During...

Nudging Financial and Demographic Literacy: Experimental Evidence from an Italian Trade Union Pension Fund

By Francesco C. Billari (Bocconi University - Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management), Carlo A. Favero (Bocconi University - Department of Finance; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)) & Francesco Saita (Bocconi University - Department of Finance) In this article, we present and test experimentally a low-cost, Internet-based, financial literacy program that we designed for implementation with the largest industrial pension fund in Italy. The program, Finlife (Financial Education and Planning for a Long Life) included 1) an instructional...

Securing the Future for Old Age in the Asia and Pacific Region: Short-Term and Historical Challenges

By Christian Aspalter (BNU-HKBU United International College, Zhuhai, China) This paper sets out to summarize major conundrums, and some of their solutions, in pension reform policy of the years ahead, with particular reference to the Asia-Pacific Region, and here again, Japan and Thailand. The repercussions for non-action pertaining to the reform and overhaul of public pension systems go far beyond the realm of social policy and economic development. The twin-issue of old-age poverty and fiscal sustainability of public pension systems...