September 2018

British Airways discharges £4.4bn in pension liabilities

Legal & General takes over responsibilities for 22,000 pensioners as airline tries to protect itself from higher costs in future British Airways has offloaded £4.4bn in pension liabilities to an insurance company in a bid to cap its pension responsibilities. Legal & General will effectively take over the liabilities for 22,000 British Airways pensioners in the largest deal of its kind in the UK. The aim of the “bulk annuity” deal is to protect British Airways from higher pension costs in...

Population ageing in emerging Europe: Consequences and policy challenges

According to the 2018 Ageing Report, the EU will ‘turn increasingly grey’ in the coming decades. The latest projections reveal dramatic changes in the population structure up to 2070 in the EU and the central and eastern European countries (CEE-EU). For the EU, the size of the population is expected to be broadly unchanged, while for the CEE-EU it would fall considerably. For both, the population will be much older in the future, stemming from low birth rates, rising...

Still Attached? Are Social Safety Nets Working? Labor Force Participation in European Regions

By Benjamin Hilgenstock (Institute of International Finance) & Zsoka Koczan (International Monetary Fund (IMF)) The paper examines the evolution and drivers of labor force participation in European regions, focusing on the effects of trade and technology. As in the United States, rural regions within European countries saw more pronounced declines (or smaller increases) in participation than urban regions. Unlike in the United States, however, trade and technology, captured here using novel measures of initial exposures to routinization and offshoring, did...

June 2018

Age Discrimination in European Employment Law: Problems and Potential Reforms

By Dáire McCormack-George (School of Law at Trinity College, Dublin) Irish employment equality law is driven by European Union policy. However, the law on age discrimination in employment is currently in a deeply worrying state. In this essay, I will make two arguments in relation to the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the lawfulness of mandatory retirement ages. First, I will argue that the case law of the Court is, in the main,...

February 2018

Building Evidence for Active Ageing Policies: Active Ageing Index and its Potential

By Asghar Zaidi,‎ Sarah Harper,‎ Kenneth Howse,‎ Giovanni Lamura,‎ Jolanta Perek-Bialas  This book provides multinational evidence on active and healthy ageing. It generates authoritative new knowledge for mutual learning and policymaking in addressing challenges linked with population ageing. The authors discuss how to achieve better active ageing outcomes through appropriate policies including addressing life course determinants of active and healthy ageing. The chapters are distinctive in their focus on quantitative analysis of active and healthy ageing based on a first-of-its-kind composite measure, the Active Ageing...

January 2018

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…)

Eurasian Economic Perspectives: Proceedings of the 20th Eurasia Business and Economics Society Conference

By Mehmet Huseyin Bilgin,‎ Hakan Danis,‎ Ender Demir & Ugur Can This volume presents selected papers on recent management research from the 20th Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference, which was held in Vienna in 2016. Its primary goal is to showcase advances in the fields of public economics, regional studies, economic development and inequality, and economic policy-making. Reflecting the contemporary political climate, many of the articles address the effectiveness, relevance and impact of European Union policies. In addition,...

March 2017

Towards an Equitable and Sustainable Points System: A Proposal for Pension Reform in Belgium

By Erik Schokkaert (Catholic University of Leuven), Pierre Devolder (Catholic University of Louvain), Jean Hindriks (University of London) & Frank Vandenbroucke (University of Amsterdam) We describe the points system that has been proposed by the Belgian Commission for Pension Reform 2020-2040. Intragenerational equity can be realised in a flexible and transparent way through the allocation of points within a cohort. The intergenerational distribution is determined by fixing the value of a point for the newly retired and a sustainability parameter...

Pensions and Sovereign Default

By Sean Myers (Stanford University) This paper studies the effect of public pension obligations on a government's decision to default. In the model, the government can renege on its pension promises but suffers a cost from losing the trust of households about future pensions. Large pension promises act as a commitment device for debt because they require the government to have regular access to credit markets. The government's decision to default is driven by its total obligations, not just its...