Personal pension plans transfer investment risk to participating workers and expose them to the volatility of financial returns. Simple financial strategies lower the volatility of replacement rates but at a significant cost in terms of lower replacement rates. The purchase of valuable annuities...

"The author studies annuity rates in Chile and relates them with industry competition. He finds (1) that annuity insurance companies paying higher broker commissions paid lower annuity rates; and (2) a structural break of the long-run elasticity of annuity rates to the risk-free rate in 2001....

"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...

"Empirical analyses of annuities markets have been limited to a few industrial countries and restricted by data limitations. Chile provides excellent conditions for research on annuities because of the depth of its market and the availability of data. The authors use a panel of life insurance...

"Empirical analyses of annuities markets have been limited to a few industrial countries and restricted by data limitations. Chile provides excellent conditions for research on annuities because of the depth of its market and the availability of data. The authors use an extensive dataset on...

Introducing individual retirement accounts has a positive incentive effect that increases the share of the economically active population contributing to the reformed pension system. But this effect occurs only gradually as employers and workers become familiar with the new set of social...

Preliminary result of a continuing research project that analyzes annuity markets in various countries. The projects focussed on understanding whether annuity makerts can be relied upon to provide reliable retirement income at reasonable prices