July 2023

Pensions, 54% of Italians fear that they are insufficient to live on. Private savings are essential

«I can’t wait to retire!..» How many times, and how many people, have they thought about saying “goodbye” to work, daily routine, stress and fatigue? If the moment of leaving the labor market is seen as a real liberation, in Italy there are those who think that it could become a far worse condemnation than meetings, phone calls, computers and shifts. Because on closer inspection the majority of men and women “in career” believe that they do not have,...

November 2022

Analysis: Italy’s Meloni needs urgent fix for ballooning pensions bill

Italy's new prime minister Giorgia Meloni needs urgently to rein in a bloated pension system which absorbs most social spending and looks increasingly unsustainable in the face of surging inflation. Rome already has the highest pension bill in the 38-nation Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and says outlays will climb by 58 billion euros ($60.35 billion), or 19.5%, by 2025 as rising prices boost index-linked payouts. With one of the world's oldest populations and low birth and employment rates, Italy...

Italy to Boost Pension Spending in Bid to Keep Up With Inflation

Italy’s pensions will increase by 7.3% from next year to keep up with rising inflation, Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said on Wednesday. The boost to retirement payments, which is automatic in contrast to wage hikes, will bring relief to households hit by soaring energy costs in the European Union’s third-biggest economy but may further complicate the European Central Bank’s efforts to rein in consumer prices. Overall, spending on pensions will increase by more than €50 billion ($50.4 billion) through 2025, the...

July 2022

Italy. Pensions at the center of the electoral campaign, here are the parties’ proposals

The issue of pensions, like every electoral round, has forcefully entered the center of the campaign for the vote on 25 September. Silvio Berlusconi immediately launched the minimum pensions of one thousand euros, a proposal already in the past relaunched by the Brothers of Italy (to be financed with a cut in citizenship income). The League has already re-proposed Quota 41 (the possibility of going out with 41 years of contributions regardless of age, ed). In the center-left there...

February 2022

Italy makes another attempt at pension reform as debt worries mount

Italy is working on a reform to make it easier for workers to retire early without bloating Europe’s second-highest pensions bill as rising borrowing costs fuel concern about the country’s huge public debt. Officials said that Mario Draghi’s government wants to inject more flexibility into the system while avoiding the fate of the unpopular 2011 reform that  raised the retirement age steeply but was suspended in 2018 after a backlash. Read also French Prime Minister Castex: pensions to be adjusted to...

October 2021

Designing a pension system

By Vincenzo Galasso Designing a pension system is both a complex endeavor and a long lasting legacy. Complexity stems from the many trade-offs that conceiving a pension system entail and from how these initial decisions affect the social and economic behavioral responses of workers and retirees. Policy-makers planning a pension system have to evaluate its internal economic consistency, but also these feedbacks. Economic and demographic models that allow a quantitative evaluation of these costs and benefits are required. More than...

March 2021

Italy. Pension funds seize first Italian green bonds offering

Pension funds and insurance companies snatched up the largest share of green bonds (14.3%) issued by the Italian government among the investors with a long-term investment horizon, the Finance Ministry said in a note. Central banks and government institutions bought the remaining 10% of the total 24.3% of the green bonds allocated to long-term financial investors, it added. Hedge funds secured 3.6%, while fund managers acquired 53.1% of the total green bonds issued, with banks underwriting 18.5%. A total of 530 investors...

February 2021

Italy. Pension funds pull positive returns in 2020 despite pandemic

The pension fund for management staff of oil and gas company ENI has recorded positive results for all its investment options last year. The performance of its garantito assicurativo fund stood at 1.71%, 11.28% for the last five years. Its bilanciato (balanced) fund recorded a positive performance of 3.44% in 2020, with a 13.52% for the past five years. Fopdire’s dinamico fund hit 5.20% last year, reacing a 21.70% figure for the last five years. On average annually, for the...

December 2020

Four Italian pension funds unite for major push into private debt

Four Italian pension funds have combined their efforts to find an alternative investment manager to oversee mandates related to private debt. The funds – Fondo Gomma Plastica, Fopen, Pegaso and Previmoda – have a total of €195m in commitments, which will result in a core strategy or unitranche corporate direct lending, with other strategies being added residually. The group said the tender, known as the Zefiro Project, will focus mainly on the European Economic Area with particular attention on...

October 2020

Workforce Aging, Pension Reforms, and Firm Outcomes

By Francesca Carta, Francesco D’Amuri, Till Von Wachter Raising statutory retirement ages has been a popular policy to increase the labor supply of older workers in the face of population aging. In this paper, we quantify the effect of a sharp and unexpected increase in retirement ages on firms’ input mix and economic outcomes using Italian administrative and survey data on employment, wages, value added and capital. Exploiting information on lifetime pension contributions for the universe of employees, we...