December 2017

G20 Nations Shifting the Trillions: Impact Investing, Green Infrastructure and Inclusive Growth

By M. Nicolas J. Firzli (World Pensions Council (WPC)) The 2017 Spring Meetings coincided with the surprise calling of snap general elections in the UK and military tensions in the Yellow Sea. Our postwar social contract has to cope with unprecedented shocks: Britain’s thorny withdrawal from the EU, worsening Migrant Crisis, rise in populist demagoguery. But there are also positive signs: the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and new, more demanding governance norms are making unprecedented advances across the boardrooms of...

November 2017

Pension Taxes and Labor Supply: Evidence from a Soviet Context

By Olga Malkova (University of Kentucky - Department of Economics) This study quantifies the effects of Soviet Russia’s 1960s reforms that gradually reduced the tax rate on pensions of employed pensioners from seventy-four to zero percent, and of the 1971 reform that substantially increased the minimum pension. The differential group eligibility and regional implementation allow me to use a differences-in-differences framework. Within a year after the tax rate fell from seventy-four to forty-one percent, employment rates rose by twenty-seven percent,...

Are Pension Contributions a Threat to Shareholder Payouts?

By Seth Armitage (University of Edinburgh) & Ronan Gallagher (University of Edinburgh - Edinburgh Business School) UK companies have been making large contributions to reduce the deficits of their pension funds, and are believed to fund such contributions in part by reducing dividends. Using data from 2003, we find very little evidence that large contributions are associated with reductions in dividends or other payouts to shareholders. We find further that companies tend to make large contributions when they have healthy...

Achieving pension goals in retirement: how to move Latin American DC second pillars forward

By Eduardo Rodriguez Montemayor PPI’s Editorial Board editorial@pensionpolicy.net Nobel-prize winner Robert C. Merton stated in more than one occasion that “our approach to DC savings is all wrong: we need to think about monthly income, not net worth”, in reference to how defined-contribution (DC) pension schemes usually focus on maximizing the amount of assets that people accumulate at the time of retirement instead of focusing on actually achieving a regular pension payment during retirement. Nicholas Barr and Peter Diamond, two of the global...

Rethinking Limits on Tax-Deferred Retirement Savings in Canada

By William B. P. Robson (C.D. Howe Institute) Tax rules limiting the amount of tax deferral available to Canadians in various retirement saving vehicles need some measure of equivalency among them. Since 1990 this measure has been the Factor of Nine, based on the proposition that saving 9 percent of annual earnings will let a person buy a retirement annuity equal to 1 percent of pre-retirement income. A quarter century later, the flaws in the Factor of Nine are glaring...

The Nation’s Retirement System: A Comprehensive Re-Evaluation Is Needed to Better Promote Future Retirement Security

By Charles A. Jeszeck, Margie K Shields, Justine Augeri, Christina Cantor, Gustavo Fernandez, Jennifer Gregory, Adam Wendel, Seyda Wentworth (Government Accountability Office) The U.S. retirement system, and the workers and retirees it was designed to help, face major challenges. Traditional pensions have become much less common, and individuals are increasingly responsible for planning and managing their own retirement savings accounts, such as 401(k) plans. Yet research shows that many households are ill-equipped for this task and have little or no...

The Nation's Retirement System: A Comprehensive Re-Evaluation Is Needed to Better Promote Future Retirement Security

By Charles A. Jeszeck, Margie K Shields, Justine Augeri, Christina Cantor, Gustavo Fernandez, Jennifer Gregory, Adam Wendel, Seyda Wentworth (Government Accountability Office) The U.S. retirement system, and the workers and retirees it was designed to help, face major challenges. Traditional pensions have become much less common, and individuals are increasingly responsible for planning and managing their own retirement savings accounts, such as 401(k) plans. Yet research shows that many households are ill-equipped for this task and have little or no...

October 2017

Retirement Age Effects of Pension and Salary Reforms: Evidence from Wisconsin Teachers

By Barbara Biasi (Princeton University) Public sector employees in the US receive a large part of their lifetime compensation in the form of defined benefit pensions, financed in part with employees’ salary contributions. Combined with different wage structures, these pension plans can affect workers’ decisions on the optimal retirement age and, in turn, the composition of the workforce. In this paper I study the retirement effects of a reform which increased all Wisconsin teachers’ contribution to the pension fund, and...

Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index 2017

By Yianni Katiforis As the social and economic effects of population ageing grow, nations’ capacities to effectively provide financial security in retirement become progressively more critical. A public measure of this readiness, the MMGPI’s global profile has also increased steadily since its inception in 2009. This year, the 9th edition of the report assessed the retirement income systems of 30 nations across six continents, covering more than half of the global population. Despite retaining its third-place ranking behind Denmark and The Netherlands,...

Transición pensional del Régimen General de pensiones en el ESD: Servidores Públicos

por Angela Janeth Rivera Silva Los fondos de pensiones que administran el Régimen De Prima Media con Prestación Definida, han visto en aumento el número de demandas en su contra por parte de los pensionados por ley 33 de 1985, quienes solicitan la Reliquidación de la Pensión con el IBL del último año de servicios y todos los factores salariales percibidos, con fundamento en la Sentencia del 4 de agosto de 2010 del Consejo de Estado , y la Circular...