An opinion poll on a representative sample of Italian citizens suggests that it does. We focus on reforms that would lengthen retirement age and/or cut pension benefits. After controlling for individual features of the respondent, we find that individuals who are more informed about the costs...

The creeping stock market collapse eroded the wealth of funded pension systems. This led to political tensions between generations due to the fuzzy definition of property rights on the pension funds wealth. We argue that this problem can best be resolved by the introduction of generational...

Private pension provision faces the challenging task of providing stable income streams during retirement. The challenge has increased markedly in the last decades due to volatile financial markets, falling interest rates and the withdrawal of employers and external insurers as risk bearers of...

We explore the feasibility of a funded pension system with intergenerational risk sharing when participation in the system is voluntary. Typically, the willingness of the young to participate depends on their belief about the future young's willingness to do so. We characterise equilibria with...

This paper presents new evidence on how the annuitization decision is affected by changes in the annuity's value. We take advantage of an unprecendented change in policy, which in 2004 moderated the super-mandatory Swiss occupational pension scheme: The 20 percent reduction in the rate at which...

When entering retirement most people face the decision whether they would like their defined contribution account balance paid as a lump sum or to annuitize the amount. The fact that people tend to choose the lump sum even if economic reasons suggest not to is called the annuity puzzle. In a...

Transfers to women may affect their bargaining power within the household and consequently their well-being. We analyze the effects of a pension reform in Argentina that resulted in an unexpected and substantial increase in permanent income for around 1.8 million senior women (women 60 years and...

This study investigates the determinants of applications for US disability benefits between 1986 and 1993 using a semiparametric discrete factor procedure. Approximating a dynamic optimization model, the estimation carefully accounts for a variety of potential biases that weren’t addressed in...

This study investigates the labour force behaviour of older married couples in Germany. Monthly observations from the first 11 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) are used to describe and analyse the relationship between the labour force behaviour of husbands and wives. The...

Social insurance for the elderly is judged responsible for the widely observed trend towards early retirement. In a world of laissez-faire or in a first-best setting, there would be no such trend. However, when first-best instruments are not available, because health and productivity are not...