January 2022
06Jan

Did Pandemic Unemployment Benefits Reduce Employment? Evidence from Early State-Level Expirations in June 2021

By Harry J. Holzer, R. Glenn Hubbard & Michael R. Strain The generosity of Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits was expanded during the pandemic (FPUC), along with the groups of workers eligible for benefits (PUA). These two programs were set to expire in September 2021, but 18 states opted out of both in June 2021. Using Current Population Survey data, we present difference-in-difference and event study estimates that the flow of unemployed workers into employment increased by around two-thirds following early...

January 6, 2022
Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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December 2021
29Dec

Choice Overload? Participation and Asset Allocation in French Employer-Sponsored Saving Plans

By Marie Briere, James M. Poterba & Ariane Szafarz This paper employs administrative data from one of the largest plan providers in France to investigate the role of plan and default characteristics in affecting whether employees participate in the plan and whether they accept its default investment option. The dataset includes information on the saving choices of 680,392 active employees at 1,610 firms. French employers have wide discretion in structuring employee saving plans. All plans must offer medium-term investments, which...

December 29, 2021
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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29Dec

What Drives Variation in Investor Portfolios? Evidence from Retirement Plans

By Mark Egan, Alexander MacKay & Hanbin Yang We study empirical patterns in investment behavior using a comprehensive data set of defined contribution plans. Using plan-level portfolio allocation data for the near universe of 401(k) plans over the period 2009-2019, we document substantial differences in investment behavior across plans. Plans with wealthier and more educated participants tend to have higher equity exposure while plans with more retirees and minorities tend to have lower equity exposure. These patterns cannot be explained...

December 29, 2021
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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29Dec

Green Finance: A Shift Towards Sustainable Economic Growth

By Bazgha Khan & Noria Farooqui Green finance refers to the financial arrangements that are specific to the utilization for projects that are environmentally sustainable or projects that adopt the aspects of global climate change. It’s to extend the level of financial flows from banking, micro-credit, insurance and investment, the public, private and not-for-profit sectors to sustainable development priorities. United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has been working to align financial systems to the 2030 sustainable development agenda to direct financial flows...

December 29, 2021
Articles, Investment, , ,
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23Dec

Aging, Retirement and Economic Growth

By Chao Ma & Xiangbo Liu This paper aims at examining the effects of an increase in life expectancy on long-run growth boosted through endogenous human capital accumulation. We first justify the negative growth effects of population aging by developing a three-period overlapping generation (OLG) model with private and public education systems and a social security scheme of a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) nature. In our model, government expenditure structure is allowed to adapt to demographic shifts for the purpose of maintaining...

December 23, 2021
Aging, Articles, ,
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23Dec

Pension Reform and Labor Supply

By Andrew C. Johnston & Jonah Rockoff As unfunded pension liabilities mount, governments experiment with ways to curb the costs of pensions. We examine the effect of one such reform on the retention and productivity of public-sector workers. The reform reduced pension annuities and increased penalties for early retirement, projected to save 8 percent of revenues. We use the fact that the reform only applied to workers below age and experience cutoffs to estimate the effect of the reform. We...

December 23, 2021
Articles, Labor Market, Pension design,
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23Dec

The impact of non-contributory cash transfers on poverty in Latin America

By Simone Cecchini, Pablo Villatoro & Xavier Mancero This article assesses the impact of conditional cash transfers, social pensions and other non-contributory transfers on different indicators of poverty and extreme poverty in Latin America, based on an analysis of household surveys from 15 countries in the region between 2014 and 2017. It is found that in 2017, the combined effect of non-contributory social protection programmes reduced simple regional averages for poverty by 2.0 percentage points and for extreme poverty by...

December 23, 2021
Articles, System Sustainability, , ,
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17Dec

Understanding and Forecasting Demographic Risk and Benefits

By David Bohl, Barry Hughes & Shelby Johnson There is a global demographic transition underway—mortality rates and fertility rates are declining in almost every country. Different countries are at different stages of this demographic transition, generally corresponding to their level of economic development, and progressing at different speeds. Declining mortality and fertility, along with migration, determine the changing age structures of countries. There are macro-economic, financial, and social burdens and benefits associated with different age structures. Since demographics is largely...

December 17, 2021
Aging, Articles, , ,
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17Dec

Pension Information and Women’s Awareness

By Paola Profeta, Marta Angelici, Daniela Del Boca, Maria Christina Rossi, Noemi Oggero & Claudia Villosio We explore the role of financial and pension information in increasing women’s knowledge and awareness of their future pension status and interest for pension information. We interview a representative sample of 801 Italian working women to assess their knowledge about pensions, financial issues and their own savings. The responses show that their knowledge and awareness of retirement planning is limited. We then run a...

December 17, 2021
Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, ,
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17Dec

Spending in the Shadow: The Impact of Unfunded Pensions on Public Services and Public Employees

By Manita Rao The shadow of unfunded public pensions has raised concerns on its consequences for public services and public employees. Some argue that pension liabilities increase the cost of government by crowding out public services. Others suggest that unfunded pensions are more likely to affect public employees and have limited implications for public services. This article empirically examines the extent to which the impact of unfunded pensions is mitigated or has spillover effects on public services and public employees....

December 17, 2021
Articles, Public Pensions,
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