January 2018

15Jan

A Look into the United States’ Underfunded Pension System

By Jason Lin (Truman State University - Department of Business Administration) & Jane Sung (Truman State University) The public pension crisis has come under increasing scrutiny over the past decade as shifting demographic trends, harsh economic conditions and the very nature of pension funds have changed, and not for the better. Pension funds create valuable saving and investment tools for an individual's retirement. They make what seems like the impossible daunting task of saving sufficient funds for retirement completely feasible....

January 15, 2018
Articles, Pension design, Regulation, System Sustainability, , ,
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08Jan

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...

January 8, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, System Sustainability, , , ,
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December 2017

30Dec

Role of Public Employee Pensions in Contributing to State Insolvency and the Possibility of a State Bankruptcy Chapter

By Professor United States Congress Role of public employee pensions in contributing to state insolvency and the possibility of a state bankruptcy chapter hearing before the Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, first session, February 14, 2011. (more…)

December 30, 2017
Books, System Sustainability,
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November 2017

14Nov

Achieving pension goals in retirement: how to move Latin American DC second pillars forward

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...

November 14, 2017
Adequacy, OP Ed, Pension design, PPI’s original Op-Eds, Regulation, System Sustainability, , , ,
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14Nov

Pension Goals and Institutional Arrangements: Reforms DC 2.0 for Latin America

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...

November 14, 2017
Adequacy, Articles, Pension design, Slider-Left, System Sustainability, , ,
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12Nov

Alternative Measures of Non-Cognitive Skills and Their Effect on Retirement Preparation and Financial Capability

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...

November 12, 2017
Articles, Investing, Pension design, Slider-Left, System Sustainability,
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October 2017

27Oct

Retirement Age Effects of Pension and Salary Reforms: Evidence from Wisconsin Teachers

By Barbara Biasi (Princeton University) Public sector employees in the US receive a large part of their lifetime compensation in the form of defined benefit pensions, financed in part with employees’ salary contributions. Combined with different wage structures, these pension plans can affect workers’ decisions on the optimal retirement age and, in turn, the composition of the workforce. In this paper I study the retirement effects of a reform which increased all Wisconsin teachers’ contribution to the pension fund, and...

October 27, 2017
Articles, Funding, Regulation, Slider-Left, System Sustainability, , , ,
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26Oct

Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index 2017

By Yianni Katiforis As the social and economic effects of population ageing grow, nations’ capacities to effectively provide financial security in retirement become progressively more critical. A public measure of this readiness, the MMGPI’s global profile has also increased steadily since its inception in 2009. This year, the 9th edition of the report assessed the retirement income systems of 30 nations across six continents, covering more than half of the global population. Despite retaining its third-place ranking behind Denmark and The Netherlands,...

October 26, 2017
Adequacy, Books, Funding, Regulation, System Sustainability
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16Oct

A Survey of Behavioral Finance

By Nicholas Barberis, Richard Thaler Behavioral finance argues that some financial phenomena can plausibly be understood using models in which some agents are not fully rational. The field has two building blocks: limits to arbitrage, which argues that it can be difficult for rational traders to undo the dislocations caused by less rational traders; and psychology, which catalogues the kinds of deviations from full rationality we might expect to see. We discuss these two topics, and then present a number...

October 16, 2017
Articles, Labor Market, Slider-Left, System Sustainability,
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09Oct

Saving the Next Billion from Old Age Poverty. Global Lessons for Local Action

This Book Project is the first of a series of initiatives by pinBox to jumpstart a global dialogue and collaborative action on pension inclusion across Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Book presents the policy outlook, past efforts and planned interventions by several developing countries as well as thematic chapters on the key principles and issues in design and implementation of inclusive pension arrangements. This book was realeased on October 12 on the pinBox Digital Micro-Pension Inclusion Roundtable 2017 For more information...

October 9, 2017
Adequacy, Aging, Articles, Books, Corporate Governance, Funding, Investing, Labor Market, Management, News, Pension design, Regulation, Savings, Slider, Supervision, System Sustainability
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