We estimate the portfolio effect of changes in social security wealth exploiting a decade of Italian pension reforms as a source of exogenous variation. The Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth records detailed portfolio data and elicits expectations of retirement outcomes, thus...

In order to study whether public pension systems displace private saving, we use the quasi-experimental variation in pension wealth created by Poland’s 1999 pension reform. Using the 1997–2003 Polish Household Budget Surveys, we begin by estimating “difference-in-differences”...

A recent wave of economic research has studied the transformation of China from a poor country in the 1970s to a middle-income economy today. Based on this literature, we discuss the factors driving China’s development process. We provide a historical account of China’s rise, fall, and...

When the challenges of population aging are being debated, the uncertain future of pension systems is a topic of high priority and large controversy. The aim of this chapter is not to provide a “consensus view” on social security and public insurance in aging populations but to put structure...

We relate household savings to pension reform, to explain the high household savings rates in urban China from a new perspective. We use the exogenous – policy-induced – variation in pension wealth to estimate explicitly the impact of pension wealth on household savings, and obtain evidence...

We estimate the effect of pension reforms on households’ expectations of retirement outcomes and private wealth accumulation decisions exploiting a decade of Italian pension reforms as a source of exogenous variation in expected pension wealth. Two parameters are crucial to estimate pension...

Large variations in retirement wealth are common, with some households accumulating hundreds of thousands of dollars and others accumulating next to nothing. We examine to what extent formal planning or simple rules of thumb contribute to these differences in wealth accumulation. In particular,...

The paper examines how individuals respond to complex decision-making environments - in particular, whether up-front financial incentives are an effective policy lever to change behaviour. The paper argues that incentives differ in their transparency and in their complexity; individuals are more...