April 2018

23Apr

Defined Contribution Pensions: Plan Rules, Participant Choices, and the Path of Least Resistance

By James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian & Andrew Metrick Over the last 20 years, defined-contribution pension plans have gradually replaced defined benefit pension plans as the primary privately sponsored vehicle to provide retirement income. At year-end 2000, employers sponsored over 325,000 401(k) plans with more than 42 million active participants and $1.8 trillion in assets.1 The growth of 401(k)-type savings plans and the associated displacement of defined benefit plans have generated new concerns about the adequacy of employee...

April 23, 2018
Pension design, ,
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23Apr

Organizing Old Age Pensions for India’s Informal Workers: A Case Study of a Sector-Driven Approach

By M.R. Narayana (University of Mysore) About 88 percent of India’s total labor force is composed of informal (officially labeled “unorganized”) workers. As many as 388 million such workers lack old age income security by way of a pension system. The Atal Pension Yojana (APY) is the latest contributory, national-level old age pension scheme for unorganized workers, with an entry age of 18–40 years. In other words, all current unorganized workers above the age of 40 are excluded. How could...

April 23, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, , ,
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23Apr

Organizing Old Age Pensions for India's Informal Workers: A Case Study of a Sector-Driven Approach

By M.R. Narayana (University of Mysore) About 88 percent of India’s total labor force is composed of informal (officially labeled “unorganized”) workers. As many as 388 million such workers lack old age income security by way of a pension system. The Atal Pension Yojana (APY) is the latest contributory, national-level old age pension scheme for unorganized workers, with an entry age of 18–40 years. In other words, all current unorganized workers above the age of 40 are excluded. How could...

April 23, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, , ,
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15Apr

Italy: Toward a Growth-Friendly Fiscal Reform

By Michal Andrle (International Monetary Fund (IMF)), Shafik Hebous (International Monetary Fund), Alvar Kangur (International Monetary Fund (IMF)), Mehdi Raissi (International Monetary Fund (IMF) - Asia and Pacific Department) Published in late 2017, the Italian medium-term fiscal plan aims to achieve structural balanceby 2020, although concrete, high-quality measures to meet the target are yet to be specified.This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion by: (i) assessing spending patterns to identifyareas for savings (ii) evaluating the pension system (iii) analyzing the scope for...

April 15, 2018
Articles, Regulation, ,
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15Apr

On Welfare Effects of Increasing Retirement Age

By Krzysztof Makarski (National Bank of Poland; Warsaw School of Economics (SGH)) & Joanna Tyrowicz (National Bank of Poland; University of Warsaw) We develop an OLG model with realistic assumptions about longevity to analyze the welfare effects of raising the retirement age. We look at a scenario where an economy has a pay-as-you-go defined benefit scheme and compare it to a scenario with defined contribution schemes (funded or notional). We show that, initially, in both types of pension system schemes...

April 15, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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09Apr

Best Interests in the Long Term: Fiduciary Duties and ESG Integration

By Susan N. Gary (University of Oregon - School of Law) Two persistent misconceptions continue to affect the way fiduciaries think about sustainable investing: (1) fiduciary duties block a fiduciary investor from considering environmental and social factors and (2) if a fiduciary investor engages in sustainable or responsible investing, the portfolio will suffer financially. An examination of socially responsible investing, ESG integration (an investment process that involves consideration of material environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors together with traditional financial...

April 9, 2018
Articles, Pension design, ,
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02Apr

Political Preferences and the Aging of Populations: Political-economy Explanations of Pension Reform

By Oliver Pamp Oliver Pamp analyzes the likelihood and extent of pension reforms from a political-economy perspective. It is shown that voters’ preferences for or against reforms are influenced by a societies’ demographic development, the generosity of its existing public pension scheme and its electoral system. The author extensively reviews existing formal models of pension systems, discusses their merits and limitations, and develops a three-period overlapping generations model. The model’s insights regarding individual reform preferences are then put into the...

April 2, 2018
Aging, Books, System Sustainability, ,
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02Apr

Petitioning and the Making of the Administrative State

By Maggie McKinley (University of Pennsylvania Law School) The administrative state is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. Many have questioned the legality of the myriad commissions, boards, and agencies through which much of our modern governance occurs. Scholars such as Jerry Mashaw, Theda Skocpol, and Michele Dauber, among others, have provided compelling institutional histories, illustrating that administrative lawmaking has roots in the early American republic. Others have attempted to assuage concerns through interpretive theory, arguing that the Administrative Procedure...

April 2, 2018
Articles, Regulation,
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March 2018

19Mar

The High Cost of Good Intentions: A History of U.S. Federal Entitlement Programs

By John F. Cogan Federal entitlement programs are strewn throughout the pages of U.S. history, springing from the noble purpose of assisting people who are destitute through no fault of their own. Yet as federal entitlement programs have grown, so too have their inefficiency and their cost. Neither tax revenues nor revenues generated by the national economy have been able to keep pace with their rising growth, bringing the national debt to a record peacetime level. The High Cost of...

March 19, 2018
Books, Pension design, System Sustainability, , ,
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