Trade in goods that are not perfect substitutes can considerably change the predictions of standard neoclassical models about the effects of asymmetric demographic developments. This paper considers a relative decrease in the population size of one country, when countries specialize in the...

Demographic projections forecast a doubling of the dependency ratio until 2050 as well as an increase of 10% in population due to longer life expectancy in Switzerland. To quantify the effects on social security and public finances, we use a computational overlapping generations model with five...

We analyze the political stability of welfare enhancing privatization of the social security. We consider an economy populated by overlapping generations, who vote on abolishing the funded system and replacing it with the pay-as-you-go scheme, i.e. "unprivatizing" the pension system. We show...

This paper studies the redistribution and welfare effects of increasing the flexibility of individual pension take-up. We use an overlapping-generations model with Beveridgean pay-as-you-go pensions, where individuals differ in ability and life span. We find that introducing flexible pension...

Using a rich micro dataset drawn from administrative archives, we explore whether Social Security Wealth (SSW) is an important factor affecting the decision to become self-employed in Italy. We focus on the two main categories of self-employed professions covered by the Italian public pension...

Analyzing 30 OECD-countries between 1980-2010, this paper estimates the effect of an aging electorate on public expenditure on old age. The main outcome is that an increase in the age of the median voter is not significantly associated with more generous pensions. The second result is that an...

Both the impacts of financial incentives and health on transitions into retirement and inactivity by older workers have been studied extensively in a variety of contexts but far less is known about their interaction. Guided by the option value framework, we use Spanish data from the European...

We investigate inattention on the part of pension plan participants using a novel dataset covering savings in Sweden's Premium Pension System, data that permit direct comparison of the investment behaviors of pension and retail mutual fund investors. Unlike retail mutual fund investors, pension...

We analyze expectations of the Dutch population of ages 25 and older concerning the future generosity of Dutch state and occupational pensions, the two main pillars of the Dutch pension system. Since the summer of 2006, monthly survey data were collected on the expectations of Dutch households...

This paper examines the impact of participants' age distribution on the asset allocation of Dutch pension funds, using a unique data set of pension fund investment plans for 2007. Theory predicts a negative effect of age on (strategic) equity exposures. We observe that pension funds do indeed...