In response to population aging, pay-as-you-go pensions are being reduced in almost all developed countries. In many countries, governments aim to fill the resulting gap with subsidized private pensions. This paper exploits the recent German pension reform to shed new light on the uptake of...

This article gives exact general conditions for the existence of an interior optimum growth rate for population in the neoclassical two-generations-overlapping model. In an economy where high (low) growth rates of population lead to a growth path which is efficient (inefficient) there always...

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...

English Abstract: Targeting is an important aim for social policy. Three case studies in this paper reflect typical short-comings in the targeting design of pension reforms. The first case study examines how well work disability and receipt of disability insurance match in Germany. We show that...

English Abstract: Over the past decades, combining pension benefits with work income has been made more accessible for pensioners in many European countries. The literature on working pensioners choosing a flexible transition into retirement is to date relatively sparse. This article adds to the...

In the last decades, many governments have enacted flexible retirement reforms as a seemingly elegant way to increase older workers' labor supply. Börsch-Supan et al. (2018) use the synthetic control method to evaluate the effects of flexibility reforms from nine OECD countries that came into...

German Abstract: Im Koalitionsvertrag vom 14.03.2018 wird angekündigt, die Leistungen und Beiträge der Gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung durch eine so genannte „doppelte Haltelinie“ festzuschreiben. Konkret soll das Netto-Standardrentenniveau vor Steuern nicht unter 48% absinken und...

This paper measures individual and household indicators of retirement income adequacy with a particular emphasis on the difference between formerly traditionally employed and formerly self-employed workers. We also present estimates of the prevalence of old-age poverty in European countries. We...