This paper assesses how a permanent shift from financing a public pay-as-you-go pension by direct (labour income) taxation towards financing it by indirect(consumption) taxation affects the economy and welfare. To this end, we use anoverlapping-generations-augmented two-region general...

This paper shows that demographic change plays an important role in the formation of a country's net foreign asset position. An ageing population both lowers the demand and increases the supply of capital in an economy. Fewer workers reduce the required capital stock. As a longer life span leads...

This paper presents long term projections of the German pension system that are based on a general equilibrium model with overlapping generations (OLG). This framework takes into account the two way feedback of both micro and macroeconomic relationships, meaning that households, for example,...

The currently observed demographic change consists of two independent develop-ments that differ in structure and persistence: (1) A slow, monotonic and (presum-ably) permanent ageing effect caused by an increasing life expectancy; (2) a morerapidly changing, non-monotonic and less permanent...

Using an empirical age-period-cohort model we analyze the effects of different Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) public pension systems on financial imbalance, on inequality in permanent income, and on the rate of return of social security assets of heterogeneous agents in terms of gender and education....

We analyze the impact of changing employment patterns and pension reforms on the future level of public pensions across birth cohorts in Germany. The analysis is based on a rich dataset that combines household survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and process-produced...

The life-cycle hypothesis implies that consumption would not decline at retirement. However, several studies found relevant declines in food consumption after retirement for the United States. Others concluded that this contradiction of the life-cycle hypothesis is solved by allowing for broader...

We empirically investigate the distributional consequences of the Riester scheme, the main private pension subsidization program in Germany. We find that 38% of the aggregate subsidy accrues to the top two deciles of the population, but only 7.3% to the bottom two. Nonetheless the Riester scheme...

To counteract the financial pressure emerging in aging societies, statutory pay-as-you-go pension schemes are undergoing fundamental reforms in many Western countries. Starting with cohort 1937, Germany introduced permanent pension deductions for early retirement. This paper examines the...

In aging societies, information on how to reform pension systems is essential to policy makers. This study scrutinizes effects of early retirement disincentives on retirement behavior, individual welfare, pensions and public budget. We employ administrative pension data and a detailed model of...