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February 2017

Finance and Labor: Perspectives on Risk, Inequality and Democracy

By Sanford M. Jacoby This paper considers the association between financial development and labor-market outcomes such as risk and inequality. The relationship is not straightforward, however. It is mediated by politics at the national and corporate levels. Politics spurs financial development, which sets in motion countervailing efforts to restrain the effect of finance on inequality and risk. The empirical analysis relies on historical, comparative, and contemporary evidence. Emphasis is given to recent events in the United States: the political origins...

Is Asia Prepared for an Aging Population?

By Peter Heller Many Asian countries (such as China, Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines) will experience a significant aging of their populations during the next several decades. This paper explores how these aging Asian countries are addressing and anticipating the challenges of an aging society. It suggests that Asia's preparedness for an aging population is decidedly mixed. While growth policies have been successful, much work is still needed in many countries to establish an adequate and...

The Future of Labor and Employment Law in the United States

By Katherine V.W. Stone There is a serious problem with the labor and employment law system in the United States today: Unions have declined to the point where they represent less than 8 per cent of the private sector workforce, employee wages have stagnated for more than three decades, employers are cutting back on workers' health insurance and pensions, and there is a dramatic growth in the numbers of the working poor. At the same time, there has been a...

Taxing Kenya’s M-Pesa Picks the Pockets of the Poor

By Liliana Rojas-Suarez Kenya has instituted a new tax that affects users of M-Pesa -- a widely popular phone-based money transfer service used by more than half of Kenya’s adult population. The new 10 percent excise duty on fees charged for money transfer services applies to mobile phone providers, banks, and other money transfer agencies. Operated by Safaricom, the largest mobile network operator in Kenya, M-Pesa accounts for the largest share of users of money transfer services. Users of M-Pesa...

Aging, Social Security Design, and Capital Accumulation

By Antoine Dedry, Harun Onder & Pierre Pestieau This paper analyzes the impact of aging on capital accumulation and welfare in a country with a sizable unfunded social security system. Using a two-period overlapping generation model with potentially endogenous retirement decisions, the paper shows that the type of aging, i.e. declining fertility or increasing longevity, and the type of unfunded social security system, i.e. defined contributions or defined benefits, are important in understanding this impact. Moreover, the analysis provides a...

Initiate Deficits to Strengthen Public Finances: The Role of Private Pensions

By Ales Berk, Dragan Jovanovic & Joze Sambt In this paper we use our comprehensive pension system model calibrated to the real demographic, employment and retirement data, measure transition costs of implementing mandatory private second-pillar into the pension landscape and consider fiscal sustainability of pension system. We report sensitivity to the most relevant parameters both within a second-pillar and a pay-as-you-go, and argue that fiscal sustainability and improved (higher) accrual rates are not incompatible policy goals if only pension reform...

Risk of Disability, Old Age and Death: Pension Sustainability in Colombia

By Sergio Clavijo, Alejandro Vera Sandoval, David Malagón, Laura Clavijo, Andrea Ríos Serna, Ekaterina Cuellar & Nelson Vera This document concludes that the sustainability of the RPM (Pay-as-you-go, defined benefits public regime) looks fragile and is threatened by massive transfers from the RAIS (defined contributions private regime) to the RPM. The fiscal deficit of the RPM could be rising from 140% of GDP (in NPV) to 228% of GDP during the next three decades on account of the migration of...

Behavioural Science in Law & Policy: Evidence, Ethics, & Expertise

By Newcastle University Behavioural economics, and behavioural science more generally, has become an increasingly salient aspect of modern policy debates. Despite the current enthusiasm amongst governments and policy-makers for behavioural approaches, there are potential problems with the use of the behavioural sciences to formulate public policy, many of which remain underexplored. This workshop brought together papers from a range of different disciplinary, regulatory, and practical perspectives to examine the potential benefits and pitfalls of behavioural science as applied to policy. The workshop...

Building Long-Term Portfolio Benchmarks for Pension Funds in Emerging Economies

By Heinz P. Rudolph & Jorge Sabat The movement from a defined benefit to a defined contribution pension system has important implications in the area of portfolio allocation. While the focus of defined benefit pension funds is essentially in the long term, some defined contribution funds might have incentives to invest with shorter-term horizons. The case of open pension funds, such as the ones in several countries in Latin America and Central and Eastern European countries, shows that competition on...

Towards Sustainable But Still Adequate Pensions in the EU: Theory, Trends and Simulations

By Juraj Draxler & Jorgen Mortensen This report is a summary of the research project on the 'Adequacy and Sustainability of Old-Age Income Maintenance' (AIM). Thirteen institutes from across the EU have collaborated on the task of assessing the situation of today’s pensioners and providing insights into future trends and policy options for securing adequate income for EU pensioners. The AIM project produced several state-of-the-art additions to the debate on EU pension reforms. Among others, the National Institute of Economic and...