February 2017

The Role of Social Security in Overall Retirement Resources: A Distributional Perspective

By Alice Henriques & John Sabelhaus During recent decades, the US employer-sponsored retirement system has undergone a major shift from primarily defined benefit (DB)-type plans to primarily defined contribution (DC)-type plans. Furthermore, in the past decade, participation in employer retirement plans has fallen, particularly for younger and lower-income families. In light of this, there is growing concern that wealth accumulation through employer-provided pension plans is falling short, especially for the bottom half of the income distribution. However, focusing only on...

Non-Contributory Pensions Number-Gender Effects on Poverty and Household Decisions

By Miguel Ángel Borrella, Mariano Bosch & Marcello Sartarelli Non-contributory pensions, designed to reduce old-age poverty particularly in countries with low contributory coverage, may induce a variety of household behavioural responses. This paper tests whether they vary with beneficiaries number and gender in Bolivia, one of the countries with the lowest contributory coverage worldwide. Taking advantage of a discontinuity in eligibility at age 60 in the Renta Dignidad pension, we estimate these effects by using a bi-dimensional regression discontinuity design,...

What Enron Means for the Management and Control of the Modern Business Corporation: Some Initial Reflections

The Enron case challenges some of the core beliefs and practices that have underpinned various positions in the debates about corporate law and governance, including mergers and acquisitions, since the 1980s. In particular, Enron raises at least the following problems for the received model of corporate governance: First, it provides another set of reasons to question the strength of the efficient market hypothesis, here, the company's dizzyingly high stock price despite transparently irrational reliance on its auditors' compromised certification. Second, it...

Longevity Risk Management for Life and Variable Annuities: Effectiveness of Static Hedging Using Longevity Bonds and Derivatives

By Michael Sherris & Andrew Ngai For many years the longevity risk of individuals has been underestimated as survival probabilities improved across the developed world. The uncertainty and volatility of future longevity has posed significant risk issues for both individuals and product providers of annuities and pensions. This paper investigates the effectiveness of static hedging strategies for longevity risk management using longevity bonds and derivatives (q-forwards) for the retail products: life annuity, deferred life annuity, indexed life annuity and variable...

Technical Review Panel for the Pension Insurance Modeling System (PIMS)

By Olivia S. Mitchell, Christopher Geczy, Robert Novy-Marx, Raimond Maurer, Donald E. Fuerst, Christopher Bone, Donald J. Segal, Martin G. Clarke, Frank J. Fabozzi, Deborah Lucas & David F. Babbel In April of 2013, the Pension Research Council of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania convened a Technical Review Panel, comprising ten experts whose task it was to review the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s (PBGC) Pension Insurance Modeling System (PIMS), including inputs, outputs, and model assumptions. The review...

Are ‘Voluntary’ Self-Employed Better Prepared for Retirement than ‘Forced’ Self-Employed? The Case of the Netherlands and Germany

By Douglas Hershey, Hendrik van Dalen, Weiteke Conen & Kene Henkens When it comes to financial preparation for retirement, self-employed workers in many European countries face unique challenges not encountered by traditional wage earners. This is particularly true for self-employed workers who do not supervise subordinate personnel. This is the case because many self-employed individuals in nations such as the Netherlands and Germany do not have large-scale access to employer-sponsored pensions, which are a mainstay of pension support for most...

Workplace-Linked Pensions for an Aging Demographic

By Olivia S. Mitchell & John Piggott Pensions and population aging intersect in two ways. First, demographic change threatens the sustainability of traditional pay-as-you-go social security pensions, leaving workplace-linked pensions with a greater role in retirement provision. Second, as the Baby Boom generation enters retirement, new challenges arise around its retirement support. This chapter reviews some of the implications of population aging for workplace pensions in this new environment, outlines market considerations important for workplace-related pension design for the future,...

Optimal Social Security Claiming Behavior under Lump Sum Incentives: Theory and Evidence

By Raimond Maurer, Olivia S. Mitchell, Ralph Rogalla & Tatjana Schimetschek People who delay claiming Social Security receive higher lifelong benefits upon retirement. We survey individuals on their willingness to delay claiming later, if they could receive a lump sum in lieu of a higher annuity payment. Using a moment-matching approach, we calibrate a lifecycle model tracking observed claiming patterns under current rules and predict optimal claiming outcomes under the lump sum approach. Our model correctly predicts that early claimers...

Uber Retirement

By Paul Secunda The rise of the gig economy with its part-time, itinerant, independent workers, in conjunction with the employee-centric nature of occupational retirement benefits under ERISA, has led to gig employees largely lacking meaningful retirement benefits. Current proposals to provide portable benefits to gig workers as independent workers or independent contractors are unacceptable because such benefits would not be secured by the fiduciary consumer protections of ERISA. However, two developments with regard to the retirement security of the gig workers...

Inside Debt

By Alex Edmans & Qi Liu Existing theories advocate the exclusive use of equity-like instruments in executive compensation. However, recent empirical studies document the prevalence of debt-like instruments such as pensions. This paper justifies the use of debt as efficient compensation. Inside debt is a superior solution to the agency costs of debt than the solvency-contingent bonuses and salaries proposed by prior literature, since its payoff depends not only on the incidence of bankruptcy but also firm value in bankruptcy....