According to the 2001 Spanish budgetary previsions, the government deficit is about to disappear. We analyse this matter within a generational accounting framework. Accounting for the recent expansive phase of the economic cycle, we find that current fiscal policy is also intertemporally...

Estonia is widely regarded as a paramount example for a successful transformation of a socialist economic system to a functioning market economy. Against the backdrop of this positive image which contrasts strongly with the crisis scenarios in Southern Europe the remaining problems of Estonia...

Many Belgian retire well before the statutory retirement age. Numerous exit routes from the labor force can be identified: old-age pensions, conventional early retirement, disability insurance, and unemployment insurance are the most prominent ones. We analyze the retirement decision of Belgian...

The paper studies retirement behavior of wage‐earners in Belgium – for the first time using rich survey data to explore retirement incentives as faced by individuals. Specifically, we use SHARE data to estimate a model à la Stock and Wise (1990). Exploring the longitudinal nature of...

An examination of the public pension and social security schemes in Pakistan reveals that the provision of regular pensions is limited to formal sector employees only. A number of social security schemes that are operational in the public and private sectors cover a small proportion of old-age...

With a declining birthrate and an aging population, Japan is increasingly finding itself in deeper financial difficulties. Recognizing these conditions, the government is now examining a framework for maintaining fiscal sustainability, mainly at the Council of Economic and Fiscal Policy. The...

This paper reviews the development of the social security system and trends in the urban labor market in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Despite its remarkable economic achievement, the PRC faces a difficult path before it can reform and improve its social security system and provide basic...

The paper examines the impact of recent inflation and financial shocks on the vulnerable, and explores policy design to reduce both future shocks and vulnerability to shocks. Inflation affects the typical savings cum pension portfolio and the specific consumption basket of the old, as prices of...

In the past few years, public policy towards the elderly has become an emerging policy issue for Indonesia. With one-third of all Indonesians predicted to be elderly (i.e. aged 60 years or older) in the year 2050, millions of citizens are vulnerable to old age poverty, since many of them will...

We develop a general equilibrium stochastic OLG model with heterogenous households. Households differ with respect to their productivity. Productivity depends stochastically on parents' unobservable investment in their child's human capital and an aggregate productivity shock. We introduce a...