Articles Archives - Page 118 of 140 - Pension Policy International

30JulJuly 30, 2017

Optimal Longevity Risk Transfer and Investment Strategies

By Samuel H. Cox (University of Manitoba), Yijia Lin (University of Nebraska) & Sheen Liu (Washington State University) Given the rising cost of maintaining defined benefit (DB) pensions, there has been a surge of activities in recent years by DB plan sponsors to transfer their pension risk through strategies such as buy-ins and buy-outs. As buy-in and buy-out transaction pipelines grow, insurers actively participating in the buy-in and buy-out markets are exposed to significant longevity risk embedded in pension schemes....

July 30, 2017

Articles, Investing, Management, Pension designDefined Benefit, Management, Risk

30JulJuly 30, 2017

Pension Funds and the Impact of Switching Regulation on Long-Term Investment

By Alvaro Pedraza & Fiona Stewart (World Bank); Olga Fuentes & Pamela Searle (Superintendencia de Pensiones) This paper looks at the impact of members' ability to switch pension fund provider and/or portfolio on the allocation of pension funds to long-term investments. The level of annual turnover in pension fund portfolios was compared with the amount of short-term investments (using government treasury bills and bank deposits as proxy). The investment regulations around switching and other market conduct were then considered. The...

July 30, 2017

Articles, Investing, RegulationInvesting, Management

23JulJuly 23, 2017

The Evolution of Social Security Research

By Mario Arturo Ruiz Estrada (University of Malaya) & Evangelos Koutronas (Social Security Research Centre) This article examines the evolution of social security research from a theoretical and empirical perspective. This is done through an extensive review and analysis of publications from the Journal of International Social Security Review published by Wiley within a 50-year period (1967-2017). It was observed that at a different period in time, the social security research focused on different national and international issues that invoked...

July 23, 2017

Adequacy, Articles, RegulationPolitical economy, Social Protection

23JulJuly 23, 2017

Life-Cycle Earnings Curves and Safe Savings Rates

By Derek Tharp (Kansas State University) & Michael E. Kitces (The Kitces Report & Nerd's Eye View) Traditional analyses of recommended savings ratios and safe savings rates (SSRs) typically assume constant real earnings growth throughout the one’s career. However, data on the life-cycle earnings patterns of millions of U.S. workers suggests that earnings growth does not occur at a constant rate that matches inflation. Instead, earnings tend to increase at a decreasing rate during the early years of one’s career...

July 23, 2017

Aging, Articles, Labor Market, SavingsAging, Replacement Rate

23JulJuly 23, 2017

Retirement Security in an Aging Society

By James M. Poterba The share of the U.S. population over the age of 65 was 8.1 percent in 1950, 12.4 percent in 2000, and is projected to reach 20.9 percent by 2050. The percent over 85 is projected to more than double from current levels, reaching 4.2 percent by mid-century. The aging of the U.S. population makes issues of retirement security increasingly important. Elderly individuals exhibit wide disparities in their sources of income. For those in the bottom half of...

July 23, 2017

Aging, Articles, Investing, SavingsManagement, Private Pensions, Regulation, Social Protection

16JulJuly 16, 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...

July 16, 2017

Articles, Pension design, Regulation, SavingsMandatory pensions, Voluntary pensions

16JulJuly 16, 2017

How Hard Should We Push the Poor to Save for Retirement?

By Andrew G. Biggs (American Enterprise Institute) More than half of U.S. states are working to establish programs what would automatically enrollment in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) workers who are not offered a retirement plan by their employer. These programs are designed to address a perceived shortfall of retirement saving, particularly among low-wage workers who are less likely to be offered an employer-sponsored plan. But the designers of state-run auto-IRA plans fail to consider three questions: Do the poor need...

July 16, 2017

Articles, Labor Market, Management, SavingsEnrolment, Identity, Social Protection

16JulJuly 16, 2017

Policy Reflection: Letter of Credit Usage by Defined Benefit Pension Plans in Canada

By Norma L. Nielson & Peggy L. Hedges (University of Calgary) There is an argument to be made for letting corporations hold off on contributing to their employees’ defined benefit pension plans, as long as there is a guarantee the cash will come eventually. That is the reason that provincial governments began allowing creditworthy companies to instead provide a letter of credit, backed by a Canadian bank, guaranteeing the cash deposit, and secured by the company’s line of credit or...

July 16, 2017

Adequacy, Articles, Pension design, SavingsFunding, Occupational Pensions, Saving

09JulJuly 9, 2017

Role of Social Security in Explaining the Rate of Saving Disparity: A Historical Study of New Zealand versus Singapore: 1960 – 1993

By Debasis Bandyopadhyay & Vera M. Chung (University of Auckland) This paper provides evidence to argue that the difference in the social security schemes of two countries may help explain the disparity in their saving rates. We examine the argument by limiting our focus to a comparison of New Zealand and Singapore for the period 1960 – 1993. We choose the period to avoid the potential impact of the major restructuring of the New Zealand Superannuation since 1994 toward a...

July 9, 2017

Articles, Labor Market, Regulation, SavingsFinancial Inclusion, Social Protection

09JulJuly 9, 2017

Policy Reflection: Letter of Credit Usage by Defined Benefit Pension Plans in Canada

By Norma L. Nielson & Peggy L. Hedges (University of Calgary) There is an argument to be made for letting corporations hold off on contributing to their employees’ defined benefit pension plans, as long as there is a guarantee the cash will come eventually. That is the reason that provincial governments began allowing creditworthy companies to instead provide a letter of credit, backed by a Canadian bank, guaranteeing the cash deposit, and secured by the company’s line of credit or...

July 9, 2017

Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, RegulationInvesting, Regulation

July 2017