Die Kosten von 36 klassischen Riester-Rentenversicherungen werden anhand von Kostenkennziffern für verschiedene Sparertypen und Verzinsungsannahmen in den unterschiedlichen Phasen der Vertragslaufzeit miteinander verglichen. Es gibt sehr günstige und sehr teure Verträge. Die große...

In the course of the ongoing debate regarding the critique of the German Riester pension the Swedish premium pension has often been referred to as a role model regarding potential amendments and reforms. The Swedish pension reform of 1998 has led to a reorganization towards a stratified scheme,...

Many motives for saving a portion of one’s income co-exist and their relative importance changes over the life-cycle. However, most existing work focuses on only one of those motives and makes simplifying assumptions about the other motives so that they can be relegated to the background....

We examine financial literacy in Germany using data from the SAVE survey. We find that knowledge of basic financial concepts is lacking among women, the less educated, and those living in East Germany. In particular, those with low education and low income in East Germany have little financial...

One important parameter in the decision process when buying a private annuity is individuals' subjective life expectancy, because it directly influences the expected rate of return. We examine the market for private annuities in Germany and evaluate potential selection effects based on...

In order to encourage people to take out voluntary private pensions to supplement decreasing statutory provisions Germany introduced the so-called Riester pensions. The complex design of the new product might have created entry barriers into the market helping to explain the slow adaption path...

Die Rentenreform 2001 hat mit der Riester-Rente ein staatlich gefördertes, reguliertes Altersvorsorgeprodukt eingeführt. Über diese zusätzliche Altersvorsorge sollen die künftigen Rentnergenerationen das langfristige Absinken des gesetzlichen Rentenniveaus kompensieren. Dieser Beitrag geht...

We use the German reunification as a natural experiment to understand drivers of financial literacy accumulation. With the transformation from a planned to a market-based economy in 1990, the incentives to invest in financial literacy were changed exogenously for East Germans and remained the...

This Paper provides a two-part empirical analysis on how actuarial reduction rates for early retirement affect current pension payments in Germany and to what extent the existence and the magnitude of such reduction rates influence people’s retirement planning. First, when looking at...

On average, "young" people underestimate whereas "old" people overestimate their chances to survive into the future. We adopt a Bayesian learning model of ambiguous survival beliefs which replicates these patterns. The model is embedded within a non-expected utility model of life-cycle...