July 2018

16Jul

Immigration and Redistribution

By Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano, Stefanie Stantcheva We design and conduct large-scale surveys and experiments in six countries to investigate how natives' perceptions of immigrants influence their preferences for redistribution. We find strikingly large biases in natives' perceptions of the number and characteristics of immigrants: in all countries, respondents greatly overestimate the total number of immigrants, think immigrants are culturally and religiously more distant from them, and are economically weaker – less educated, more unemployed, poorer, and more reliant on...

July 16, 2018
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09Jul

Pension Plans in Germany: Market Sales in Germany

From Editorial DataGroup Europe The Pension Plans Germany eBook provides 14 years Historic and Forecast data on the market for each of the 5 Products and Markets covered. The Products and Markets covered (Pension Plans) are classified by the Major Products and then further defined and analysed by each subsidiary Product or Market Sector. In addition full Financial Data (188 items: Historic and Forecast Balance Sheet, Financial Margins and Ratios) Data is provided, as well as Industry Data (59 items)...

July 9, 2018
Books, Labor Market, Pension design, , , ,
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07Jul

The Changing Face of Debt and Financial Fragility at Older Ages

By Annamaria Lusardi, Olivia S. Mitchell & Noemi Oggero We investigate changes in older individuals' financial fragility as they stand on the verge of retirement. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we compare how debt has changed for successive cohorts of people age 56–61. Our analysis shows that recent older Americans close to retirement hold more debt, and hence face greater financial insecurity, than earlier generations. This is primarily due to having bought more expensive homes with...

July 7, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, , , ,
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06Jul

Demography and Provisions for Retirement: The Pension Composition, an Equilibrium Approach

By B.M.S. van Praag (University of Amsterdam) & J. Peter Hop (University of Amsterdam) Pensions may be provided for in a modern society by several methods, viz., voluntary individual savings, mandatory fully funded occupational pension systems, and mandatory social security financed by pay-as-you-go. The specific mixture of the three systems we will call the pension composition. We assume that individual workers decide about their own individual savings, that the fully funded occupational system is decided upon by the age cohort of...

July 6, 2018
Adequacy, Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, , , , ,
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June 2018

25Jun

Aging and Disability: Beyond Stereotypes to Inclusion: Proceedings of a Workshop

By Engineering and Medicine National Academies of Sciences Many different groups of people are subject to stereotypes. Positive stereotypes (e.g., “older and wiser”) may provide a benefit to the relevant groups. However, negative stereotypes of aging and of disability continue to persist and, in some cases, remain socially acceptable. Research has shown that when exposed to negative images of aging, older persons demonstrate poor physical and cognitive performance and function, while those who are exposed to positive images of aging...

June 25, 2018
Aging, Books, Labor Market,
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16Jun

Wage Determination in the Long Run, Real Wage Resistance and Unemployment: Multivariate Analysis of Cointegrating Relations in 10 OECD Economies

By Timo Tyrväinen (Bank of Finland) Over the past twenty years or so, unemployment has been increasing in most OECD economies.In the same period, there has been a considerable increase in the wedge between the real cost to the employer of hiring a worker and the net real wage received by the worker.The present study examines whether changes in the wedge (including various tax rates) may have generated long-lasting effects on real labour costs.Behaviour which generates this kind of outcome...

June 16, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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11Jun

Optimal Risk-Sharing in Pension Funds When Stock and Labor Markets are Co-Integrated

By Ilja Boelaars (University of Chicago) & Roel Mehlkopf (Tilburg University) A well established believe in the pension industry is that collective pension funds should take more stock market risk (compared to individual retirement accounts) since risk may be shared with future generations. We extend the OLG model of Gollier (2008) by adding labor income risk in the spirit of Benzoni, Collin-Dufresne, and Goldstein (2007) and show that this idea may be misguided. For the empirical range of parameter values...

June 11, 2018
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10Jun

Inheritances and Inequality across and within Generations

By Andrew Hood & Robert Joyce Today’s elderly have much more wealth to bequeath than their predecessors, primarily as the result of rising homeownership rates and rising house prices. At the same time, today’s young adults will find it harder to accumulate wealth of their own than previous generations did, due to the sharp fall in homeownership, the dramatic decline of defined benefit pensions in the private sector and the stagnation in household incomes. Together, these trends mean inherited wealth is...

June 10, 2018
Aging, Books, Labor Market, Savings, ,
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10Jun

Why Are People Working Longer In The Netherlands?

By Adriaan Kalwij, Arie Kapteyn, Klaas de Vos Labor force participation at older ages has been rising in the Netherlands since the mid-nineteen-nineties. Reforms of the social security and pension systems have often been put forward as main explanations for this rise. However, participation rates above the normal retirement age of 65 have almost tripled for men and quadrupled for women despite the fact that at those ages reforms are unlikely to have had much impact. This suggests other factors...

June 10, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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10Jun

Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

By Ben Casselman You can see the gig economy everywhere but in the statistics. For years, economists, pundits and policymakers have grappled with the rise of Uber, the growth of temporary work and the fissuring of the relationship between companies and their workers. Optimists cheered the flexibility offered by the freelance life. Pessimists fretted about the disappearance of traditional jobs, with the benefits and legal protections they provided. That debate has played out largely in the absence of solid data. But on...

June 10, 2018
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