"New Zealand's new Recognized Seasonal Employer program allows workers from the Pacific Islands to come to New Zealand for up to seven months to work in the horticulture and viticulture industries. One of the explicit objectives of the program is to encourage economic development in the Pacific....

"Temporary migration programs for unskilled workers are increasingly being proposed as a way to both relieve labor shortages in developed countries and aid development in sending countries without entailing many of the costs associated with permanent migration. New Zealand's new Recognized...

"Far-reaching changes in the regulation of financial markets and the organization of public pensions in the 1980s and 1990s transformed the landscape for retirement products in Sweden. First, banking and insurance were extensively deregulated in the 1980s, while the securities markets...

"In this paper the authors reconsider the idea of an earnings-related pension system with reserves invested in indexed government bonds as a mechanism to both ensure financial sustainability and improve security. They start by reviewing the characterization of the sustainable rate of return of...

The provision of annuities and other benefits during the decumulation phase of defined contribution (DC) pension plans raises major policy issues. Because private markets for annuities and disability benefits are not well developed even in the most advanced OECD countries, the resolution of...

Switzerland is the first country to have publicly articulated the benefits of a multi-pillar approach to pensions and the first OECD country to have mandated that employers provide occupational pension plans for their employees. Not surprising, the Swiss system has many unique and attractive...

The shift toward social security systems with a tighter link between benefits and contributions will make such systems more fiscally sustainable. But to protect the uninsured and underinsured, such programs should be complemented by better social assistance programs for low-income groups