Since 2002 the German government seeks to stimulate private retirement savings by means of special allowances and tax exemptions - the so-called Riester scheme. We apply matching and panel regression techniques to assess the impact of the Riester scheme on households' propensities to save in a...

Since 2002 the German government seeks to stimulate private retirement savings by means of special allowances and tax exemptions - the so-called Riester scheme. We apply matching and panel regression techniques to assess the impact of the Riester scheme on households' propensities to save in a...

In numerous industrialized countries the demographic change erodes the financial basis of traditional pay-as-you-go pension systems. To compensate for decreasing statutory pensions, many governments incentivize private saving by means of subsidized retirement plans. In this context, Germany...

Die Riester-Förderung soll dazu beitragen, dass häufiger und mehr für die Altersvorsorge gespart wird. Der Einfluss der Riester-Förderung auf die Sparneigung von Haushalten mit niedrigem Einkommen ist dabei ein zentrales Kriterium zur ökonomischen Evaluation dieser Politik. Unsere...

In 2001 the German government started to promote the development of private pensions by means of special saving subsidies and tax incentives (Riester-scheme). That policy especially targets households with relatively low incomes. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel, we scrutinize the...

Das Altersversorgungssytem der Bundesrepublik Deutschland basiert auf drei Säulen: der gesetzlichen Rente, der betrieblichen Rente und der privaten Altersversicherung. Die gesetzliche Rente ist geschlechtsneutral ausgestaltet. Sie gewährt bei gleichen Beiträgen gleiche Rentenleistungen. Vor...

In 2001, the voluntary additional Riester pension scheme was implemented in Germany. Financial subsidies should incentivize people to increase their private pension savings. In this paper, we hypothesize that these publicly subsidized savings mainly replace existing not subsidized savings and...