We study the short-, medium-, and long-run implications of stimulating annuity markets in a dynamic general-equilibrium overlapping-generations model. We find that beneficial partial-equilibrium effects of stimulating annuity markets are counteracted by negative general-equilibrium...

The present paper aims to quantify efficiency properties of real world social security systems of various institutional designs in order to identify an optimal pension design. Starting from a benchmark economy without social security, we introduce alternative pension systems and compare the...

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...

We construct a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with overlapping generations in order to analyze the optimality of means-testing pension benefits in the UK. While previous studies only consider the long-run welfare effects of alternative policy reforms, we compute the full transition...

Recent reforms that aim at reducing the upcoming burdens of population ageing might seriously harm low income individuals. An increase in old-age poverty and disability will be the result. Under this prospect, the present paper quantitatively characterizes the optimal progressivity of unfunded...

In 2007 Germany has introduced a pension reform which increases the normal retirement age from currently age 65 to 67. The present study aims to quantify the macroeconomic, welfare and efficiency consequences of this reform by means of a computable general equilibrium model with overlapping...

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...

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...

When it comes to estimating the benefits of long-term savings, many people rely on their intuition. Focusing on the domain of retirement savings, we use a randomized experiment to explore people's intuition about how money accumulates over time. We ask half of our sample to estimate future...

Using a stochastic general equilibrium model with overlapping generations, this paper studies (i) the effects on both extensive and intensive labour supply responses to changes in fertility rates, and (ii) the potential of a retirement reform to mitigate the effects of fertility changes on...