We ask whether a PAYG-financed social security system is welfare improving in an economy with idiosyncratic and aggregate risk. We argue that interactions between the two risks are important for this question. One is a direct interaction in the form of a countercyclical variance of idiosyncratic...

The paper examines the long-term implications of various reform options on retirement entry decisions and the actual retirement age of older workers. It focuses on the changes in pension legislation since 1992 and the reform options discussed by the German Social Security Reform Commission...

Die Kontroverse über die „richtigen“ Zu- und Abschläge in der GRV beginnt mit mehreren Begriffsverwirrungen. Dies betrifft vor allem die Begriffe „versicherungsmathematisch fair“, „versicherungsmathematisch neutral“ und „anreizkompatibel“. Nur...

This paper provides a critical review of the pension reform strategy which turns defined benefits (DB) public pay-as-you-go systems into notional defined contribution (NDC) systems. We show that properly designed NDC public pension systems contain powerful economic and political mechanisms that...

Da etwa ¾ aller Selbständigen nicht durch ein obligatorisches Altersvorsorgewerk abgesichert sind, stellt sich die Frage, inwieweit Altersarmut für diese Selbständigen zum Problem werden könnte. Eine eingehende Untersuchung des Altersvorsorge-Verhaltens von Selbständigen er-scheint daher...

We model the optimal reaction of a public PAYG pension system to demographic shocks. We compare the ex-ante first best and second best solution of a Ramsey planner with full commitment to the outcome under simple third best rules that mimic the pension systems observed in the real world. The...

This paper analyzes the implications of demographic change for economic growth in di®erent countries. Quantitative projections are based on a multi-country over- lapping generations model that is augmented with actual demographic data and pro- jections for di®erent OECD regions. According...

This paper employs a large scale overlapping generations (OLG) model with endogenous human capital formation using a Ben-Porath (1967) technology to evaluate the quantitative role of human capital adjustments for the economic consequences of demographic change. We find that endogenous human...

Projected demographic changes in industrialized countries will reduce the share of the workingage population. Analyses based on standard OLG models predict that these changes will increase the capital-labor ratio. Hence, rates of return to capital decrease and wages increase, which has adverse...

This paper modifies standard block Gauss-Seidel iterations used by tatonnement methods for solving large scale deterministic heterogeneous agent models. The composite method between first- and second-order tatonnement methods is shown to considerably improve convergence both in terms of speed as...