February 2018

19Feb

Political Viability of Intergenerational Transfers. An Empirical Application

By Gianko Michailidis (University of Barcelona) & Concepcio Patxot (University of Barcelona - Department of Economic Theory) Public intergenerational transfers (IGTs) may arise because of the failure of private arrangements to provide optimal economic resources for the young and the old. We examine the political sustainability of the system of public IGTs by asking what the outcome would be if the decision per se to reallocate economic resources between generations was put to the vote. By exploiting the particular nature...

February 19, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, , ,
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January 2018

22Jan

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,...

January 22, 2018
Books, System Sustainability, ,
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22Jan

The Devil You Know: A Survey Examining How Retail Investors Seek Out and Use Financial Information and Investment Advice

By Christine Sgarlata Chung (Albany Law School) Everyday, people across the United States make decisions that will affect their financial futures — e.g., borrowing money to buy a house, go to college, or start a business; investing in the stock market to save for retirement; using check cashing services or payday lenders rather than accounts at banks or credit unions for day-to-day banking needs, and the like. Traditional tenets of financial economics and investment theory assume that people make fully...

January 22, 2018
Articles, Investing, Labor Market, Savings, , , ,
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22Jan

Macroeconomic Implications of Changes in Social Security Rules

By Bilal Bagis (Bingol University; Istanbul 29 Mayis University Department of Economics) The Turkish social insurance system has been feverishly debated for years, particularly through its burden on the economy. The most recent reform is an attempt to neutralize the deterioration within the social security system and its effects on the economy. After the recent reform, ‘the way that retirement benefits are calculated’ is changed unfavorably for workers and the minimum age for retirement is increased. In particular, for an...

January 22, 2018
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December 2017

18Dec

Behavioral Impediments to Valuing Annuities: Evidence on the Effects of Complexity and Choice Bracketing

By Jeffrey R. Brown, Arie Kapteyn, Erzo F.P. Luttmer, Olivia S. Mitchell & Anya Samek This paper examines two behavioral factors that diminish people’s ability to value a lifetime income stream or annuity, drawing on a survey of about 4,000 adults in a U.S. nationally representative sample. Our first main finding is that experimentally increasing the complexity of the annuity choice reduces respondents’ ability to value the annuity. We measure lack of ability to value an annuity by the difference...

December 18, 2017
Aging, Articles, Savings, Slider-Left, , ,
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04Dec

G20 Nations Shifting the Trillions: Impact Investing, Green Infrastructure and Inclusive Growth

By M. Nicolas J. Firzli (World Pensions Council (WPC)) The 2017 Spring Meetings coincided with the surprise calling of snap general elections in the UK and military tensions in the Yellow Sea. Our postwar social contract has to cope with unprecedented shocks: Britain’s thorny withdrawal from the EU, worsening Migrant Crisis, rise in populist demagoguery. But there are also positive signs: the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and new, more demanding governance norms are making unprecedented advances across the boardrooms of...

December 4, 2017
Articles, Corporate Governance, Investing, Regulation, Slider-Left, , , , ,
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November 2017

27Nov

Life-Cycle Labour Supply and Social Security Wealth: Evidence from the 1995 Italian Pension Reform

By Giulia Bovini (London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Economics) This paper studies life-cycle labour supply responses to lower social security wealth. An over-arching pension reform implemented in Italy in 1995 (the Dini pension reform) provides the setting for the analysis. While ushering the transition from a defined-benefit (DB) to a notional defined-contribution (NDC) scheme, it introduced discontinuities in the social security replacement rate based uniquely on years of qualifying retirement contributions accrued by the...

November 27, 2017
Aging, Labor Market, , ,
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20Nov

Are Pension Contributions a Threat to Shareholder Payouts?

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...

November 20, 2017
Management, Pension design, Regulation, ,
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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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