Any contribution to a pay-as-you-go pension system may be considered mandatory savings to the extent that it gives a claim to a future benefit. Contributors to the economic literature have argued that an increase in this savings component will lower implicit marginal tax rates, thereby reducing...

Strong intergenerational correlations in various types of welfare use have fueled a long-standing debate over whether welfare receipt in one generation causes welfare participation in the next generation. Some claim a causal relationship in welfare receipt across generations has created a...

Two key questions in thinking about the size and growth of the disability insurance program are to what extent it discourages work, and how valuable the insurance is to individuals and families. These questions motivate our paper. We begin by describing the earnings, disposable income and...

A much higher old-age dependency ratio together with more generous pension benefits will lead to a substantial increase in the future pension burden in Norway. The challenges of financing the increasing pension expenditures depend on the development in demographic characteristics like fertility,...

A much higher old-age dependency ratio, together with more generous pension benefits, will lead to a substantial increase in the future public pension expenditures burden in Norway. A pension reform implemented from 2010 will imply a shift to a quasi-actuarial system, seeking to neutralise the...

Empirical findings on the relationship between income inequality and redistribution from a cross-country perspective are not conclusive. One reason may be that observers have in mind different concepts of redistribution. A major factor is that comparator countries' pre-fisc distributions...

Norway. The new system fulfils several criteria for a defined contribution scheme. Earnings from all years in work count in the accumulation of entitlements, and an actuarial rule converting the final balance into an annuity is introduced. But the pension system will still be a part of the...

Disability Insurance (DI) programs have long been criticized by economists for apparent work disincentives. Some countries have recently modified their programs such that DI recipients are allowed to keep some of their benefits if they return to work, and other countries are considering similar...

Despite the recent popularity of conditional cash transfers (CCT) and payments for environmental services (PES) programs, what determines their success is not well understood. We developed a conceptual framework to give insight into some of the main determinants of CCT and PES program efficiency...

Benefit incidence analysis is an extremely popular tool to assess the distribution of benefits from government expenditure in developing countries, particularly in the social sectors. The analysis describes the welfare impact of public spending on groups of people or households, typically along...