During the last decade, the Dutch have debated intensively reforming their second-pillar pension scheme. Meanwhile, ten years turned out to be a too short period for pension funds to bring their funding ratios to sound levels, due to among others the worldwide decline of interest rates....

This paper stems from the observation that there are two world-wide trends, pension reform and population ageing, and asks whether the two may be related. Exploring the cases of pension reform in different countries, we find that, although they are very different, the cases share a common...

Collective pension contracts allow for intergenerational risk sharing with the unborn. They therefore imply a higher level of social welfare than individual accounts. Collective pension contracts also imply a sub-optimal allocation of consumption across time periods and states of nature however....