August 2020

14Aug

Pension tech for dummies

By Carlo Svaluto Moreolo When it comes to technological innovation in pensions the two buzzwords are blockchain and artificial intelligence. Blockchain is potentially a revolutionary technology that could significantly reduce the costs associated with pension administration and custody. Artificial intelligence – or more specifically machine learning tools – also promises to optimise many areas of the industry. They could be used to improve communications with pension fund members or to deliver better investment returns. Considerable investment is required to develop...

August 14, 2020
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14Aug

Public Pension Reforms and Fiscal Foresight: Narrative Evidence and Aggregate Implications

By Huixin Bi Sarah Zubairy We explore the evolution of pension policy across countries and investigate the macroeconomic impact of pension structural reforms in recent decades, in particular those with implementation delays. We first document chronological changes in pension policy for ten OECD countries between 1962 and 2017. The new data set uncovers that changes in pension policy come in waves, with a rapid expansion of pension systems between 1960s and 1980s followed by a wave of retrenchments since...

August 14, 2020
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07Aug

How Much to Save? Decision Costs and Retirement Plan Participation

By Jacob Goldin, Tatiana Alexandra Homonoff, Richard Patterson, Bill Skimmyhorn Deciding how much to save for retirement can be complicated. Drawing on a field experiment conducted with the Department of Defense, we study whether such complexity depresses participation in an employer-sponsored retirement saving plan. We find that simplifying one dimension of the enrollment decision, by highlighting a potential rate at which non-participants might contribute, increases participation in the plan. Similar communications that did not include a highlighted rate yield...

August 7, 2020
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07Aug

A New World Post COVID-19: Lessons for Business, the Finance Industry and Policy Makers

By Monica Billio, Simone Varotto Pandemics are disruptive events that have profound consequences for society and the economy. This volume aims to present an analysis of the economic impact of COVID-19 and its likely consequences for our future. This is achieved by drawing from the expertise of authors who specialize in a wide range of fields including fiscal and monetary policy, banking, financial markets, pensions and insurance, artificial intelligence and big data, climate change, labor market, travel, tourism and...

August 7, 2020
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July 2020

31Jul

Women Working Longer: Increased Employment at Older Ages

By Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz Today, more American women than ever before stay in the workforce into their sixties and seventies. This trend emerged in the 1980s, and has persisted during the past three decades, despite substantial changes in macroeconomic conditions. Why is this so? Today’s older American women work full-time jobs at greater rates than women in other developed countries. In Women Working Longer, editors...

July 31, 2020
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30Jul

How much to save? decision costs and retirement plan participation

By Jacob Goldin, Tatiana Homonoff, Richard W. Patterson, William L. Skimmyhorn Deciding how much to save for retirement can be complicated. Drawing on a field experiment conducted with the Department of Defense, we study whether such complexity depresses participation in an employer-sponsored retirement saving plan. We find that simplifying one dimension of the enrollment decision, by highlighting a potential rate at which non-participants might contribute, increases participation in the plan. Similar communications that did not include a highlighted rate...

July 30, 2020
Articles, Pension design, Savings,
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30Jul

China’s Policy Instruments : Tax Reduction, Retirement Prolonging and Welfare Changes

By Peilin Yang China is facing a series of significant debt problems. We have studied the changes in debt and benefits under different policy instruments under the framework of large-scale OLG. Under the three retirement ages, as the retirement age increases, the maximum increase in benefits is 17.98%, and the debt is 75.69%. Under the five tax rates, the optimal tax rate is 28%, the maximum increase in benefits is 22.65%, and the maximum debt ratio is 75%. Source:...

July 30, 2020
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24Jul

Relabeling, Retirement and Regret

By Jonathan Gruber, Ohto Kanninen, Terhi Ravaska Focal retirement ages are a central feature of Social Security programs around the world, and provide a potentially powerful tool for policy makers who are interested in reforming retirement systems to address the growing funding shortfalls. But these tools often come hand in hand with significant changes in the financial structure of Social Security that can have independent, and potentially deleterious, impacts on retirees. In this paper, we use a major reformulation...

July 24, 2020
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17Jul

Does the actuarial adjustment for pension delay affect retirement and claiming decisions?

By Devon Gorry, Kyung Min Lee, Sita Slavov We investigate the impact of more generous terms for delaying state pensions on claiming and labor supply in the United Kingdom using a 2005 policy change. First, we find that the more generous delay terms reduced the fraction of males receiving pensions at the earliest eligibility age and shortly after. While there are also post-policy changes in women’s claiming behavior, further investigation reveals that these changes do not coincide with the...

July 17, 2020
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10Jul

Financial System Requirements for Successful Pension Reform

By David P. Blake This paper examines the financial system prerequisites needed for the successful delivery of funded private pensions. In particular, it examines the financial instruments and investment strategies required during both the accumulation and decumulation stages. It does so within the context of a specific developed economy with a mature pension system, namely the United Kingdom. The lessons learned can help to inform the debate in developing countries that are in the process of undertaking pension reform....

July 10, 2020
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