February 2017

04Feb

What You Don't Know Can't Help You: Pension Knowledge and Retirement Decision-Making

By Sewin Chan & Ann Huff Stevens This paper provides an answer to an important empirical puzzle in the retirement literature: while most people know little about their own pension plans, retirement behavior is strongly affected by pension incentives. We combine administrative and self-reported pension data to measure the retirement response to actual and perceived financial incentives and document an important role for self-reported pension data in determining retirement behavior. Well-informed individuals are far more responsive to pension incentives than...

February 4, 2017
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04Feb

What You Don’t Know Can’t Help You: Pension Knowledge and Retirement Decision-Making

By Sewin Chan & Ann Huff Stevens This paper provides an answer to an important empirical puzzle in the retirement literature: while most people know little about their own pension plans, retirement behavior is strongly affected by pension incentives. We combine administrative and self-reported pension data to measure the retirement response to actual and perceived financial incentives and document an important role for self-reported pension data in determining retirement behavior. Well-informed individuals are far more responsive to pension incentives than...

February 4, 2017
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04Feb

Advancing the Ugandan Economy: A Personal Account

By Ezra Sabiti Suruma In 1973, when I returned from a seven-year tour of study in the United States to take up a teaching job at Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda), General Idi Amin was the president of Uganda and political parties were banned. There was no opportunity for anyone, including a young academic returning from study abroad, to participate in shaping the country’s political economy. The economy was starting to fail, and fear was spreading among the population because of...

February 4, 2017
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04Feb

The Issue of Rural Banking and Microfinance Institutions (Chapter)

By Ezra Sabiti Suruma The first quarter century of Uganda’s independence from British colonial rule (1962–85) was characterized by internal conflicts, dictatorship, and economic disintegration. However, the subsequent years (1986–2012) were marked by relative political and economic stability as well as sustained economic growth. During this period of transition, Ezra Suruma held many high positions in the arena of Ugandan politics and economics and served with distinction as Uganda’s minister of finance and economic development from 2005 to 2009.Advancing the...

February 4, 2017
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04Feb

Changing Frameworks for Retirement Security

By Olivia S. Mitchell In 1963, the termination of the Studebaker Corporation’s pension plan wiped out or significantly reduced the pensions of thousands of the automaker’s employees and retirees. In response, Congress passed the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), a monumental and revolutionary piece of legislation crafted to address corporate pension underfunding and set new rules regarding defined benefit (DB) and other retirement plans. ERISA also established the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation as a government-run insurer to serve...

February 4, 2017
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04Feb

Aging and Financial Victimization: How Should the Financial Service Industry Respond?

By Marguerite DeLiema and Martha Deevy Elder financial victimization is a growing problem facing older Americans. As the conduits of financial transactions, financial firms are positioned to stop losses at their source. Representatives at small and large firms were interviewed to describe their financial exploitation training and prevention programs, their detection and response protocols, and how they balance the goals of client protection with the client’s right to autonomy and privacy in financial decision-making. Representatives from regulatory agencies were interviewed...

February 4, 2017
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04Feb

Social Security in Theory and Practice (II): Efficiency Theories

By Casey B. Mulligan & Xavier Sala-i-Martin 166 countries have some kind of public old age pension.What economic forces create and sustain old age Social Security as a public program? Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (1999b) document several of the internationally and historically common features of social security programs, and explore "political" theories of Social Security. This paper discusses the "efficiency theories", which view creation of the SS program as a full of partial solution to some market failure. Efficiency explanations of social...

February 4, 2017
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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04Feb

Finance and Labor: Perspectives on Risk, Inequality and Democracy

By Sanford M. Jacoby This paper considers the association between financial development and labor-market outcomes such as risk and inequality. The relationship is not straightforward, however. It is mediated by politics at the national and corporate levels. Politics spurs financial development, which sets in motion countervailing efforts to restrain the effect of finance on inequality and risk. The empirical analysis relies on historical, comparative, and contemporary evidence. Emphasis is given to recent events in the United States: the political origins...

February 4, 2017
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04Feb

Is Asia Prepared for an Aging Population?

By Peter Heller Many Asian countries (such as China, Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines) will experience a significant aging of their populations during the next several decades. This paper explores how these aging Asian countries are addressing and anticipating the challenges of an aging society. It suggests that Asia's preparedness for an aging population is decidedly mixed. While growth policies have been successful, much work is still needed in many countries to establish an adequate and...

February 4, 2017
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04Feb

Taxing Kenya’s M-Pesa Picks the Pockets of the Poor

By Liliana Rojas-Suarez Kenya has instituted a new tax that affects users of M-Pesa -- a widely popular phone-based money transfer service used by more than half of Kenya’s adult population. The new 10 percent excise duty on fees charged for money transfer services applies to mobile phone providers, banks, and other money transfer agencies. Operated by Safaricom, the largest mobile network operator in Kenya, M-Pesa accounts for the largest share of users of money transfer services. Users of M-Pesa...

February 4, 2017
Adequacy, Articles,
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