This paper analyses the different channels through which particular generations within one society can end up subsidising other generations through the functioning of the welfare state. The welfare state, which is organised and funded by “society” through taxation, plays an important part in...

Pension accounting is anything but conservative since earnings can be protected from actuarial gains and losses. This paper shows that therefore conservatism measures based on models of the asymmetric relationship between earnings and positive versus negative stock returns are biased downwards....

The "money's worth" measure has been used to assess whether annuities are fairly valued and also as evidence for adverse selection in the annuity market. However, a regulated life assurer with concerns about predicting long-run mortality may price annuities to reduce these risks which will...

This paper examines the optimal design of pension plans when the health status during retirement is uncertain. Assuming that the health status affects both life expectancy and the marginal utility of consumption, choice between a lump-sum payment and an annuity can be welfare-enhancing if the...

This paper considers two characteristics of a public pension system: the contribution rate and the lenght of employment. A simple family of optimization models is set up, where the instantaneous utility is a Cobb-Douglas-function of consumption and leisure, futhermore, the life-time utility is a...

The early contributions to the microeconomic literature assume that only market goods yield utility, and that the only way adults can secure the consumption of these goods in old age is by saving. The more recent contributions recognize, however, that the elderly derive utility also from goods...