The present paper studies the growth and efficiency consequences of pension funding with individual retirement accounts in a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic lifespan and labor income uncertainty. We distinguish between economies with rational and hyperbolic...

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...

Like in many other OECD countries, the population will age rapidly in Germany during the next decades. This undermines the future sustainability of the current unfunded public pension system and motivates the search for reform options. The present paper aimes to evaluate some currently discussed...

The present paper aims to quantify the macroeconomic and welfare effects of taxfavored retirement accounts. Starting from an equilibrium without saving incentives, we introduce such accounts and compute the new transition path and the resulting long-run equilibrium. Since our...

The present paper studies the role of social security in an economy populated by overlapping generations of individuals that have time-consistent or time-inconsistent preferences, face mortality and individual income risk, borrowing constraints as well as progressive income taxes. Our...

The present paper studies the growth, welfare and efficiency consequences of the recent introduction of tax-favored retirement accounts in Germany in a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic lifespan and labor income uncertainty. We focus on the implicit...

This paper studies the role of pensions and income taxes in determining homeownership and household wealth. It provides a cross-country analysis, using tax and pension policy designs in Germany, the US and Australia. These developed nations have similar incomes per capita but very different...

This paper develops a general equilibrium life-cycle model with endogenous retirement and disability risk, in order to quantify the impact of recent pension reforms in Germany. At certain ages households may either apply for disability pensions (DP) or old-age pensions (OAP), de-pending on...