March 2019

17Mar

The Feasibility of Reverse Mortgages in Japan

By Richard K. Green (University of Southern California - Lusk Center for Real Estate) & Linna Zhu (USC Sol Price School of Public Policy) This paper examines the feasibility of reverse mortgages in Japan by utilizing stochastic modeling to characterize the movements of three stochastic variables—interest rates, property values and mortality—underpinning the value of reverse mortgages. We use the yield curve to forecast future interest rates, taking into account the interest arbitrage condition and the term premium. We employ hedonic...

March 17, 2019
Articles, Pension design, Savings, , ,
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17Mar

Defined Contribution Pension Plans: Who Has Seen the Risk?

By Peter Forsyth (University of Waterloo - David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science) & Kenneth R. Vetzal (University of Waterloo) The trend towards eliminating defined benefit (DB) pension plans in favor of defined contribution (DC) plans implies that increasing numbers of pension plan participants will bear the risk that final realized portfolio values may be insufficient to fund desired retirement cash flows. We compare the outcomes of various asset allocation strategies for a typical DC plan investor. The strategies...

March 17, 2019
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10Mar

Pension Plans in Mexico: Market Sales

By Editorial DataGroup Americas The Pension Plans Mexico 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)...

March 10, 2019
Books, Pension design,
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03Mar

The Effect of Noncontributory Pensions on Saving in Mexico

By Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes (San Diego State University - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics), Laura Juarez (Bank of Mexico), Jorge Alonso Ortiz (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) - Centro de Investigacion Económica) This paper examines the effects of noncontributory pension programs at the federal and state levels on Mexican households' saving patterns using micro data from the Mexican Income and Expenditure Survey. We find that the federal program curtails saving among households whose oldest member is either...

March 3, 2019
Articles, Pension design, ,
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February 2019

23Feb

On the Political Feasibility of Increasing the Legal Retirement Age

By Benjamin Bittschi (ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research) & Berthold Ulrich Wigger Within a politico-economic model we first establish three hypotheses: (i) Retirees generally prefer a higher retirement age than workers, whereby just retired individuals prefer the highest retirement age, (ii) in equilibrium the level of the legal retirement age is increasing in longevity and (iii) decreasing in the public pension replacement rate. We then test these hypotheses empirically. Employing micro data for Germany we corroborate the...

February 23, 2019
Aging, Articles, Pension design, ,
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23Feb

Pension Funds with Automatic Enrollment Schemes: Lessons for Emerging Economies

By Heinz P. Rudolph (The World Bank) Since the introduction of the KiwiSaver scheme in New Zealand in 2006, several countries have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, voluntary funded pension systems with automatic enrollment features. Since most of the literature has focused on countries with the common law tradition, including the United Kingdom and the United States, this note analyzes cases of countries with the civil code tradition, including Turkey, Poland, the Russian Federation, Chile, Brazil, and...

February 23, 2019
Articles, Pension design, System Sustainability, , , , , , , , ,
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15Feb

Pension Policy and the Financial System

By DAVID S. SCHARFSTEIN This paper examines the effect of pension policy on the structure of financial systems around the world. In particular, I explore the hypothesis that policies that promote pension savings also promote the development of capital markets. I present a model that endogenizes the extent to which savings are intermediated through banks or capital markets, and derive implications for corporate finance, household finance, banking, and the size of the financial sector. I then present a...

February 15, 2019
Articles, Pension design, Slider-Left, System Sustainability, , ,
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10Feb

What Is Policy Space for Diaconal Institutions? Challenges from Pension Obligations

By Hans Morten Haugen (VID Specialized University) Norwegian non-profit institutions have provided health care and social services in accordance with contracts with various public authorities. These contracts had various specifications concerning pensions. The core message in the contracts was, however, that employees in non-profit institutions were required to be included in similar pension agreements as public employees. During the latter part of the 2000s, this was no longer an explicit requirement in new contracts, but neither the various public contractors,...

February 10, 2019
Articles, Management, Pension design, Pension Management,
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03Feb

Pensions at Work: Socially Responsible Investment of Union-Based Pension Funds

By Jack Quarter,‎ Isla Carmichael,‎ Sherida Ryan Pension funds have come to play an increasingly important role within the new economy. According to Statistics Canada, in 2006, trusteed pension funds in Canada had $836 billion of assets and represented the savings of 4.6 million Canadian workers. Pensions at Work is a unique collection of papers that uses a labour perspective to deal with the socially responsible investment of pension funds. Featuring leading Canadian and international scholars, it builds on existing scholarship on...

February 3, 2019
Books, Labor Market, Pension design, ,
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03Feb

The Future of Saving : The Role of Pension System Design in an Aging World

By David Amaglobeli,‎ Hua Chai,‎ Era Dabla-Norris,‎ Kamil Dybczak,‎ Mauricio Soto,‎ Alexander F. Tieman This SDN explores how demographic changes have affected and will affect public and private sector savings, highlighting the interaction between pension systems, labor markets, and demographic variables. Get the book HERE!

February 3, 2019
Aging, Books, Pension design, Savings,
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