Providing a decent living standard and preventing old-age poverty are the two major challenges of pension insurance schemes. Replacement rates below the poverty line despite many years of contribution represent a major challenge for public pension schemes with respect to the systems "raison...

This paper analyses whether the severe demographic change in Germany causes its high current account surpluses. An ageing population both increases the supply and lowers demand of capital in an economy. Due to a longer life span individuals save more. Fewer workers reduce the optimal capital...

Recent macroeconomic and demographic trends have resulted in new challenges for pension systems. One of these challenges is to create a sustainable pension system while simultaneously providing adequate pension benefits for current and future pensioners. This research explores how similar are...

This paper analyzes behavioral responses to a reform in the German public pension system that allowed individuals with a long contribution history to retire without deductions before reaching the regular retirement age. Following the 2014 reform, individuals with 45 contribution years could...

The aim and scope of this paper is to isolate the effects of population ageing in the context of potential Scottish independence. Fiscal challenges are often quoted as a strong argument against independence. Demographic processes play an important role in determining future economic growth via...

This paper reconsiders the theoretical foundations of EU regional policy in economics. It begins with a discussion of the line of thought of its prevalent explanation in equilibrium economics which is focusing on market failures as its key underpinning and which is the major toolkit of...

This paper analyses the effects of EU regional policy transfer payments on net migration flows among the EU-28 countries. The hypothesis is tested that EU transfer payments do hamper internal migration across the EU. On the one hand, this is done by reestimating the results found by Egger,...

We estimate the labor force participation (LFP) response to the introduction of means-tested minimum pensions in the UK through the Old-Age Pension Act (OAP) of 1908. The OAP was a major social policy intervention and the first one to universally target older workers in a time of very limited...