Speech by Michael D'Ascenzo (School of Taxation and Business Law, UNSW Business School) Strong growth in self managed super funds presents the community with a number of challenges. (more…)
By Spankulova Seitkazievna (Narxoz University) In the article the labor behavior of women in education in post-Soviet countries is analyzed. model of employment of women (men as well), which was formed in Soviet years, has not undergone significant changes during the years of economic reforms. Expanding the accessibility of formal social security programs to the elderly has changed the behavior of this population in the labor market. Women do not receive social old-age pensions in the same amount as men,...
By Spankulova Seitkazievna (Narxoz University) In the article the labor behavior of women in education in post-Soviet countries is analyzed. model of employment of women (men as well), which was formed in Soviet years, has not undergone significant changes during the years of economic reforms. Expanding the accessibility of formal social security programs to the elderly has changed the behavior of this population in the labor market. Women do not receive social old-age pensions in the same amount as men,...
By Philip Bazel (University of Calgary - The School of Public Policy) & Jack Mintz (University of Calgary - The School of Public Policy; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)) Canadians have heard a great deal of discussion in the national media about expanding the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), driven by concerns that many will retire without having made proper arrangements to adequately replace their incomes with pensions and savings. But the proposed remedies have been targeted at...
By Yanying Chen (School of Economics, Singapore Management University) & Yi Jin Tan (School of Economics, Singapore Management University) Non-contributory pensions are becoming increasingly prevalent worldwide. As their effects are likely to be context-dependent, evaluating their effects in a wide range of settings is important for establishing the external validity of the non-contributory pension literature. We use a new monthly panel dataset and a difference-in-differences strategy to study the effect of a new non-contributory pension in Singapore (the Silver Support...
By Seth Armitage (University of Edinburgh) & Ronan Gallagher (University of Edinburgh - Edinburgh Business School) UK companies have been making large contributions to reduce the deficits of their pension funds, and are believed to fund such contributions in part by reducing dividends. Using data from 2003, we find very little evidence that large contributions are associated with reductions in dividends or other payouts to shareholders. We find further that companies tend to make large contributions when they have healthy...
By Eduardo Rodriguez Montemayor PPI’s Editorial Board editorial@pensionpolicy.net Nobel-prize winner Robert C. Merton stated in more than one occasion that “our approach to DC savings is all wrong: we need to think about monthly income, not net worth”, in reference to how defined-contribution (DC) pension schemes usually focus on maximizing the amount of assets that people accumulate at the time of retirement instead of focusing on actually achieving a regular pension payment during retirement. Nicholas Barr and Peter Diamond, two of the global...
By Manuel Enrique Garcia Huitron Sr. (Inter-American Development Bank) & Eduardo Rodriguez-Montemayor (INSEAD) The pioneering pension reforms that brought a market for individual defined-contribution (DC) pension accounts to some Latin American countries in the 1980s and 1990s have failed to gain widespread social legitimacy. Such systems do not cover everyone, and the market design and regulatory infrastructure are not geared towards achieving the objective of maximizing the value of pensions. This failure stems from a combination of flaws in the...
By William B. P. Robson (C.D. Howe Institute) Tax rules limiting the amount of tax deferral available to Canadians in various retirement saving vehicles need some measure of equivalency among them. Since 1990 this measure has been the Factor of Nine, based on the proposition that saving 9 percent of annual earnings will let a person buy a retirement annuity equal to 1 percent of pre-retirement income. A quarter century later, the flaws in the Factor of Nine are glaring...
By Gema Zamarro (University of Arkansas) Social science, more than ever, is drawing upon the insights of personality psychology. Though researchers now know that non-cognitive skills and personality traits, such as conscientiousness, grit, self-control, or a growth mindset could be important for life outcomes, they struggle to find reliable measures of these skills. Self-reports are often used for analysis but these measures have been found to be affected by important biases. We study the validity of innovative more robust measures...
