September 2020

11Sep

The Impact of Social Security on Pension Claiming and Retirement: Active vs. Passive Decisions

By Rafael Lalive, Arvind Magesan, Stefan Staubli We exploit a unique Swiss reform to identify the importance of passivity, claiming social security benefits at the Full Retirement Age (FRA). Sharp discontinuities generated by the reform reveal that raising the FRA while imposing small early claiming penalties significantly delays pension claiming and retirement, but imposing large penalties and holding the FRA fixed does not. The nature of the reform allows us to identify that between 47 and 69% of individuals are...

September 11, 2020
Articles, Pension design,
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May 2020
15May

Selfies can help Brazil create a super supplementary pension

By Arun Muralidhar, Robert C. Merton, Alexandre Vitorino Brazilian policy makers and researchers have discussed the introduction of a complementary pension system to complement the Regime Geral de Previdência Social (RGPS), specially for those that want a retirement income above the RGPS ceiling. This article first recommends that the complementary system must be SUPER (Simple, Universal, Portable, Efficient with low cost and Robust Regulatation). It then proposes the adoption of a financial innovation called SeLFIES (Standard-of-Living, Forward-starting, Income-only Securities),...

May 15, 2020
Articles, Investment, Pension design, , , ,
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11May

Covid-19, Longevity Risk & the Economics of Annuitization

Although the dire medical situation and mounting economic toll of covid-19 is of immediate and first-order importance, the virus has also prompted many to ponder their own mortality. Whether it’s doctors in emergency rooms who quickly redrafted codicils or nursing home attendants pondering their own DNR instructions, the randomness or mortality is being imprinted on our susceptible behavioral minds. Interestingly, preliminary and anecdotal evidence suggests a spike in the acquisition of life insurance policies over the last few months,...

May 11, 2020
News, Slider, , , ,
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March 2020

07Mar

Understanding Debt in the Older Population

By Annamaria Lusardi, Olivia S. Mitchell, Noemi Oggero Poor financial capability can have important consequences for wellbeing in later life. To explore aspects of financial management related to debt, we have designed and analyzed a new module in the 2018 Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We use these new data, along with information from the 2018 National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), to evaluate the factors associated with debt and debt management close to retirement. We show that a sizeable...

March 7, 2020
Aging, Articles, , ,
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