A brief overview of Social Security -- Goals for Social Security reform -- Social Security's long-term deficit -- A three-part plan to shore up Social Security -- Strengthening Social Security's effectiveness as social insurance -- Implications for benefits and revenue -- Individual accounts --...

After presenting the Gruber-Wise analysis showing a strong effect on retirement of implicit taxes from pension rules, it is shown that there is no effect of these implicit taxes on unemployment. This supports the argument for avoiding high implicit taxes on continued work. Also discussed are...

This article, based on two books (Barr and Diamond 2008, forthcoming), sets out a series of principles for pension design rooted in economic theory: pension systems have multiple objectives, analysis should consider the pension system as a whole, analysis should be framed in a second-best...