October 2024
25Oct

Beyond Informal Employment: Stagnation and Disguised Employment in Brazil

By Carolina Troncoso Baltar, Esther Dweck, Marilia Marcato & Camila Unis Krepsky This study analyses the Brazilian labour market from 2014 to 2019, focusing on the impact of the country's growth pattern on rising informal and self-employment. After a period of economic growth, Brazil faced a recession (2015-2016) and stagnation (2016-2019). Austerity-driven reforms were implemented, weakening policies aimed at stimulating growth, reducing unemployment, and improving formalization. Using structural decomposition analysis within a demand-driven input-output model, the study examines how changes in demand...

October 25, 2024
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25Oct

Pensions in Aging Asia and the Pacific: Policy Insights and Priorities

By Rafal Chomik, Philip O’Keefe & John Piggott Asia and the Pacific has the most diverse regional pension landscape globally. Yet the region’s pension systems are facing common challenges as they attempt to expand coverage, and ensure adequacy and fairness, while maintaining fiscal sustainability. We review the structures and performance of pension systems across Asia and the Pacific. Most remain characterized by low contributory coverage, social pensions with inadequate benefits and often low (or no) coverage, and informal sector schemes...

October 25, 2024
Articles, System Characterization, , , ,
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18Oct

SEC Investigations of Public Pensions

By Kangkang Zhang In recent years, the looming threat of substantial unfunded liabilities and the obligation to meet these financial commitments have become critical issues for numerous state pension plans, prompting concerns about their solvency and management. This study examines the effect on public pension plans of investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Utilizing a stacked cohort difference-in-differences design, I observe that state pensions tend to improve investment performance when subjected to SEC investigation. The observed effect...

October 18, 2024
Articles, Supervision, Supervision, , , ,
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18Oct

Parametric Pension Reform Options in Korea

By Daniel Baksa, Boele Bonthuis, Si Guo & Zsuzsa Munkacsi Population aging in Korea will pose substantial challenges to the financial sustainability of its public pension system. Under current policies and plausible assumptions, public pension spending can increase by as much as 4 percent of GDP during 2020-70, while contribution revenue will largely stay constant. This expected rise in public pension spending mainly reflects the increase in the old-age dependency ratio (and therefore the number of pension recipients), the deceleration...

October 18, 2024
Articles, System Sustainability, , ,
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18Oct

The Impact of Lump-Sum Retirement Withdrawals on Labor Supply: Evidence from Peru

By Carla Moreno & Sita Slavov  We examine the labor supply impact of a 2016 policy that allows retirementeligible individuals covered by Peru’s private pension system to receive retirement benefits as a lump sum rather than as an annuity. We present a theoretical model predicting that, for liquidity constrained workers, the lump sum option makes formal employment (requiring pension participation) more attractive relative to informal employment (not requiring pension participation); it also encourages early retirement. Using household panel data, we...

October 18, 2024
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16Oct

Who Owns the City? Pension Fund Capitalism and the Parkdale Rent Strike

By Jamie Shilton Canadian public pension funds play an increasingly significant role as institutional investors, including in the domestic residential property market. Some scholars have suggested that pension fund investments of this kind result in a form of public ownership, sometimes characterized as “pension fund socialism.” However, the actual character of pension fund investment in Canada is much more akin to a financialized pension fund capitalism, with public pension funds adopting investment strategies consistent with private financial market actors. In...

October 16, 2024
Articles, Investment,
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11Oct

Rules of Thumb and Retirement Accounts

By Vanya Horneff, David A. Love & Raimond Maurer We examine the welfare costs of applying common rules of thumb for saving, investment, 401k contributions, and withdrawals in an environment that includes a realistic treatment of taxation, Social Security benefits, 401k-plan details, and uncertainty in income, longevity, and asset returns. We test the performance of commonly recommended rules, such as investing 100-minus-age percent of assets in stocks, contributing 6–10% of income to a 401k account, or withdrawing the required minimum...

October 11, 2024
Articles, Pension design, ,
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11Oct

Beyond the Status Quo: A Critical Assessment of Lifecycle Investment Advice

By Aizhan Anarkulova, Scott Cederburg & Michael S. O'Doherty We challenge two central tenets of lifecycle investing: (i) investors should diversify across stocks and bonds and (ii) the young should hold more stocks than the old. An even mix of 50% domestic stocks and 50% international stocks held throughout one’s lifetime vastly outperforms age-based, stock-bond strategies in building wealth, supporting retirement consumption, preserving capital, and generating bequests. These findings are based on a lifecycle model that features dynamic processes for...

October 11, 2024
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11Oct

Patterns of Consumption and Savings around Retirement

By Arna Olafsson & Michaela Pagel This chapter analyzes how consumption, savings, and other positions on household balance sheets change around retirement. Four patterns stand out. First, many households have barely any savings and hold substantial amounts of consumer debt at the time of retirement. Second, consumption falls at retirement, possibly due to work-related expenses, bargain shopping, or because households face unexpected adverse shocks. Third, liquid savings increase at retirement. Fourth, wealth increases more over the course of retirement for...

October 11, 2024
Articles, Savings, , ,
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04Oct

Labor Market Gender Gaps in Türkiye: A Bird’s Eye View

By Silvia Domit & Damla Kesimal Despite recent improvements, Türkiye’s low female labor force participation and high share of informal female workers stand out internationally. Closing these gender gaps would boost medium-term growth and make it more inclusive. This paper puts these gaps in an international context, explores their interlinkages with fiscal policies, and identifies policy priorities. Source SSRN

October 4, 2024
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