June 2018

16Jun

Population Aging and the Possibility of a Middle-Income Trap in Asia

By Joonkyung Ha (Hanyang University - Ansan Campus) & Sang-Hyop Lee (University of Hawaii - Department of Economics) We present three conditions for a demography-driven middle-income trap and show that many economies in East, South, and Southeast Asia satisfy all of them. The conditions are (1) support ratio—the ratio of workers to consumers—matters for economic growth, (2) economic development accompanies more investment in human capital and lower fertility due to the quantity–quality trade-off, and (3) current low level of fertility...

June 16, 2018
Aging, Articles, , ,
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16Jun

The Effects of Means-Tested, Noncontributory Pensions on Poverty and Well-Being: Evidence from the Chilean Pension Reforms

By Italo Garcia (RAND Corporation) & Andres Otero (Independent) Chile initiated in 1981 a privately managed, individual-account pension system that inspired similar reforms in many Latin American countries, and that has been considered as a possible model for Social Security in the United States. After 30 years in place, the Chilean pension system has been criticized for replicating existing inequalities in labor markets and increasing the risk of old-age poverty; for achieving lower levels of coverage; and for providing low...

June 16, 2018
Articles, Pension design, Regulation, , , , ,
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10Jun

Inheritances and Inequality across and within Generations

By Andrew Hood & Robert Joyce Today’s elderly have much more wealth to bequeath than their predecessors, primarily as the result of rising homeownership rates and rising house prices. At the same time, today’s young adults will find it harder to accumulate wealth of their own than previous generations did, due to the sharp fall in homeownership, the dramatic decline of defined benefit pensions in the private sector and the stagnation in household incomes. Together, these trends mean inherited wealth is...

June 10, 2018
Aging, Books, Labor Market, Savings, ,
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10Jun

Pension Markets in Focus

OECD Recent years have witnessed intense pension reform efforts in countries around the globe, often involving an increased use of funded pension programmes managed by the private sector. These funded arrangements are likely to play an increasingly important role in delivering retirement income in many countries and privately managed pension assets will play an increasing role in financial markets, notably as a source of long-term savings. This annual report, which now covers 85 countries, gives an overview of private pension systems worldwide and...

June 10, 2018
Books, Management, Pension design, Regulation, ,
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10Jun

Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

By Ben Casselman You can see the gig economy everywhere but in the statistics. For years, economists, pundits and policymakers have grappled with the rise of Uber, the growth of temporary work and the fissuring of the relationship between companies and their workers. Optimists cheered the flexibility offered by the freelance life. Pessimists fretted about the disappearance of traditional jobs, with the benefits and legal protections they provided. That debate has played out largely in the absence of solid data. But on...

June 10, 2018
Articles, Labor Market, ,
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May 2018

27May

The Legality of Public Pension Reforms in Times of Financial Crisis: The Case of Greece

By Dafni Diliagka The first reactions after the outbreak of the Greek financial crisis were pension reforms and pension shortages. The central concern of this book is to provide a legal framework that allows pensioners to file claims. The book gives an overview of the factors that made pension reforms necessary before and after the financial crisis. It also describes the pension reforms and the individual shortages in pension benefits, which have been phased in by the Greek Parliament since...

May 27, 2018
Books, Regulation,
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27May

Long-Run Trends in the Economic Activity of Older People in the UK

By James W. Banks (Institute for Fiscal Studies; University of Manchester), Carl Emmerson (Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)) & Gemma Tetlow (Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)) We document employment rates of older men and women in the UK over the last forty years. In both cases growth in employment since the mid 1990s has been stronger than for younger age groups. On average, older men are still less likely to be in work than they were in the mid 1970s...

May 27, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, ,
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21May

The Aging Population and the Competitiveness of Cities: Benefits to the Urban Economy

By Peter Karl Kresl,‎ Daniele Ietri While much of the current literature on the economic consequences of an aging population focuses on the negative aspects, this enlightening book argues that seniors can bring significant benefits – such as vitality and competitiveness – to an urban economy.The authors illustrate the ways an aging population can have a positive impact on urban centers, including the move by large numbers of seniors from the suburbs to the city, where their disproportionate consumption of...

May 21, 2018
Aging, Books, Labor Market
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14May

Endogenous Retirement Behavior of Heterogeneous Households Under Pension Reforms

By Axel H. Börsch-Supan (Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences - Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA)), Klaus Härtl (Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences - Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA)), Duarte Nuno Leite (Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy; Universidade do Porto - CEF.UP - Center for Economics and Finance at UP) & Alexander Ludwig (Goethe University Frankfurt - Research Center SAFE; University of...

May 14, 2018
Articles, Pension design, Regulation, ,
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April 2018

23Apr

Implications of Behavioural Economics for Mandatory Individual Account Pension Systems

By Waldo Tapia & Juan Yermo In individual account pension systems, members bear the risks and consequences of their investment decisions. If participants behave as predicted by economic theory, such responsibility would be welfare enhancing as members would invest and hold a portfolio of financial assets with a risk-return combination consistent with their investment horizon, degree of risk aversion and the portfolio of other assets they hold, including their human capital and, where relevant, their home. Behavioural economists and empirical...

April 23, 2018
Investing, Labor Market, Savings,
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