How can retirement savings be increased? We explore a unique policy change in the context of the German pension system to study this question. As of 2005 (with a phase-in period between 2002-04), the German pension administration started to send out annual letters providing detailed and...

Public pay-as-you-go pensions still form the dominant pillar of old-age provision in Germany. This is in marked contrast to the situation in Anglo-Saxon countries. It has advantages if labour markets are strong, e.g., following a quick recovery from the Great Recession. It has disadvantages, as...

Relationships between individual traits and savings decisions vary geographically. Understanding the structure of such relationships is interesting in general, but it is particularly important in the case of the Germany, where the pension reform of 2001 significantly decreased the level of...

This paper explores the introduction of collective risk-reallocation elements in defined contribution pension contracts. We consider status-contingent, age-contingent and asset-contingent arrangements to reallocate risk among participants. Eliminating asset market risk for the retired raises...

Introduced 20 years ago as a part of the 2001 pension reform, the Riester pension is meant to function as an essential component of the German pension system with the aim of compensating for decreasing public pensions. However, data collected by the SOEP show that this objective has not yet been...

This paper analyses pension accounting choice in Germany for firms using IFRS or US GAAP. It shows that firms choose the pension discount rate and the treatment of actuarial gains and losses in order to smooth the effect of inherently volatile pension numbers. Pension discount rates for German...