April 2018

23Apr

Financializing Poverty: Labor and Risk in Indian Microfinance

By Sohini Kar Microfinance is the business of giving small, collateral-free loans to poor borrowers that are paid back in frequent intervals with interest. While these for-profit microfinance institutions (MFIs) promise social and economic empowerment, they have mainly succeeded at enfolding the poor—especially women—into the vast circuits of global finance. Financializing Poverty ethnographically examines how the emergence of MFIs has allowed financial institutions in the city of Kolkata, India, to capitalize on the poverty of its residents. This book reveals how...

April 23, 2018
Books, Labor Market
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23Apr

Healthy Ageing: A Capability Approach to Inclusive Policy and Practice

By Christine Stephens &‎ Mary Breheny What does it mean to age well? This important new book redefines what ‘successful’ aging means, challenging the idea that physical health is the only criteria to gauge the aging process, and that an aging population is necessarily a burden upon society. Using Sen’s Capabilities Approach as a theoretical starting point Healthy Ageing: A Capability Approach to Inclusive Policy and Practice outlines a nuanced perspective that transcends the purely biomedical view, recognising ideas of resilience,...

April 23, 2018
Aging, Books, Labor Market,
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19Apr

Pension Reform in Latin America and Its Lessons for International Policymakers

By Tapen Sinha The experience of privatization of social security has been predominantly in the Latin American region. Eight countries have undertaken either full or partial privatization of pensions: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. What did the policymakers expect? Were expectations realized? Can we learn anything from the collective experience of these countries? Can they be applied to other countries that are aspiring to privatize? How did the World Bank and other international institutions affect...

April 19, 2018
Books, Regulation, System Sustainability,
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Pensions: More Information, Less Ideology : Assessing the Long-Term Sustainability Ofeuropean Pension Systems : Data Requirements, Analysis and Evaluations

By Tito Boeri,‎ Axel Borsch-Supan,‎ Agar Brugiavini,‎ Richard Disney,‎ Arie Kapteyn &‎ Franco Peracchi Europeans are living longer, and fewer now remain in the labour force as they grow older. Many European countries have responded to the ensuing financial pressure by reforming their public pension systems and health care programmes. There is considerable uncertainty as to the effects of these reforms - as they typically do not alter the unfunded nature of public welfare arrangements and this uncertainty is itself...

April 2, 2018
Books, Pension design, System Sustainability,
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02Apr

Political Preferences and the Aging of Populations: Political-economy Explanations of Pension Reform

By Oliver Pamp Oliver Pamp analyzes the likelihood and extent of pension reforms from a political-economy perspective. It is shown that voters’ preferences for or against reforms are influenced by a societies’ demographic development, the generosity of its existing public pension scheme and its electoral system. The author extensively reviews existing formal models of pension systems, discusses their merits and limitations, and develops a three-period overlapping generations model. The model’s insights regarding individual reform preferences are then put into the...

April 2, 2018
Aging, Books, System Sustainability, ,
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02Apr

Pensions: Backgrounds, Trends and Issues

By Henry J. Mullen This text examines the extent to which pension plans invest in hedge funds and private equity, the potential benefits and challenges of hedge fund investments, the potential benefits and challenges of private equity investments, and what mechanisms regulate pension plan investments in hedge funds and private equity. Get the book Here!

April 2, 2018
Books, Investing, Pension design
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March 2018

19Mar

When I’m Sixty-four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them

By Teresa Ghilarducci A crisis is looming for baby boomers and anyone else who hopes to retire in the coming years. In When I'm Sixty-Four, Teresa Ghilarducci, the nation's leading authority on the economics of retirement, explains how to confront this crisis head-on, revealing the causes behind the increasingly precarious economics of old age in America and proposing a bold plan to guarantee retirement security for every working citizen. Retirement is one of the hallmarks of a prosperous, civilized market...

March 19, 2018
Books, Pension design, Savings, ,
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19Mar

Gender and Social Security Reform: What’s Fair for Women?

By Neil Gilbert Aging populations are creating tremendous pressures on social security systems throughout the world, lifting the need for reform to the top of policy agendas. Proposed reforms often have different implications for men and women. At the same time, traditional family and gender roles are changing with the decline in fertility rates and the rapid rise in women's participation in the paid labor force.While trying to adapt social security systems to the fiscal demands of aging societies, policymakers...

March 19, 2018
Books, Labor Market, Pension design, ,
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19Mar

The High Cost of Good Intentions: A History of U.S. Federal Entitlement Programs

By John F. Cogan Federal entitlement programs are strewn throughout the pages of U.S. history, springing from the noble purpose of assisting people who are destitute through no fault of their own. Yet as federal entitlement programs have grown, so too have their inefficiency and their cost. Neither tax revenues nor revenues generated by the national economy have been able to keep pace with their rising growth, bringing the national debt to a record peacetime level. The High Cost of...

March 19, 2018
Books, Pension design, System Sustainability, , ,
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