October 2017

A New Labour Ecosystem in the Sharing Economy: A Platform for Growth?

By Marta Santos Silva (University of Bremen) The role of the traditional labour market is being challenged by globalisation and modern technology, particularly the unprecedented and generalised use of smartphones. Online platforms facilitating the on-demand economy are radically changing the prospects for the jobs of the future, which will be less regulated and more inclusive. This paper focuses on online ridesharing platforms, particularly Uber as international market leader, and their potential for combating social inequality and developing the transport industry. Online ridesharing platforms...

Pensiones a la chilena

por Andrés Solimano Hasta hace poco el tema de las pensiones en Chile pertenecía al ámbito del pequeño grupo que define las políticas públicas en nuestro país, dominado por economistas y sujeto a la fuerte influencia del poderoso gremio de las AFP (Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones). Sin embargo, desde 2016 el tema pasó de las elites a las masas y se tomó las calles. Consiguió generar un debate nacional y puso en agenda prioritaria el desafío de diseñar un...

July 2017

Liquidity and Solvency in Pay-as-You-Go Defined Contribution Pension Schemes: A Continuous OLG Sustainability Framework

By Jennifer Alonso-García (University of New South Wales) & Pierre Devolder (Catholic University of Louvain) Notional Defined Contribution pension schemes are defined contribution plans which are pay-as-you-go financed. From a design viewpoint, the countries where NDCs have been implemented cannot guarantee sustainability due to the choice of notional return paid to the contributions and the indexation rate paid to pensions. We study how the scheme should be designed to achieve liquidity and solvency with a limited set of assumptions in...

May 2017

Dangerous Flexibility – Retirement Reforms Reconsidered

By Axel H. Börsch-Supan, Tabea Bucher-Koenen, Vesile Kutlu-Koc & Nicolas Goll (Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences) Flexible retirement is supposed to increase labor supply of older workers without touching the third rail of pension politics, the highly unpopular increase of the retirement age. While this may have intuitive appeal, this paper shows that it might be wishful thinking. Economic theory tells us that flexible retirement policies can have a zero or positive effect on labor force...

Contributory Retirement Saving Plans: Differences across Earnings Groups and Implications for Retirement Security

By Irena Dushi, Howard Iams & Christopher R. Tamborini (US Social Security Administration) This article examines how savings in defined contribution (DC) retirement plans vary across the earnings distribution. Specifically, the authors investigate the extent of an earnings gradient in access to, participation in, and levels of contribution to DC plans. Using a nationally representative sample of Survey of Income and Program Participation respondents to data from their W-2 tax records, the authors find that DC plan access, participation, and...

The Effect of Non-Contributory Pensions on Saving in Mexico

By Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes (San Diego State Universit), Jorge Alonso Ortiz & Laura Juárez (ITAM) This paper examines the effects of non-contributory pension programs at the federal and state levels on Mexican households' saving patterns using micro data from the Mexican Income and Expenditure Survey. The federal program by itself appears to reduce the saving rate of households whose oldest member is either 18 to 54 or 65 to 69. State programs by themselves have no significant effects on household saving rates...

February 2017

Privatizing Pensions: The Transnational Campaign for Social Security Reform

By Mitchell A . Orenstein Most Americans know of President George W. Bush’s 2005 proposals for new pension reforms to privatize Social Security, but few are aware of a conversation that took place on September 11, 1997, between then Texas Governor Bush and José Piñera, a former Chilean Secretary of Labor and Social Security. Piñera is an internationally known advocate of private, individual pension savings accounts who led the effort to replace Chile’s social security system with individual accounts in...

The Effect of Non-contributory Pensions on Saving in Mexico

By IADB This paper examines the effects of non-contributory pension programs at the federal and state levels on Mexican households’ saving patterns using micro data from the Mexican Income and Expenditure Survey. The federal program by itself appears to reduce the saving rate of households whose oldest member is either 18 to 54 or 65 to 69. State programs by themselves have no significant effects on household saving rates in the smallest localities, but in larger localities they may reduce...

Non-Contributory Pensions and Savings: Evidence from Argentina

By Martín González-Rozada & Hernán Ruffo This paper examines the effects of Argentina’s Plan de Inclusión Previsional (PIP), which changed the pension system in a way that generated a new noncontributory pillar, produced a huge expansion in pension coverage between 2005 and 2008 and a transfer of a vast amount of resources to households. Using a difference in differences methodology it is found that the PIP policy has reduced the incentives to work and to be in the labor force...