We analyze the political stability of capital funded social security. In particular, using a stylized theoretical framework we study the mechanisms behind governments capturing pension assets in order to lower current taxes. This is followed by an analysis of the analogous mechanisms in a...

We analyze the political stability of capital funded social security. In particular, using a stylized theoretical framework we study the mechanisms behind governments capturing pension assets in order to lower current taxes. This is followed by an analysis of the analogous mechanisms in a...

What is the future of social security systems in OECD countries? In our view, the answer belongs to the realm of politics. We evaluate how political constraints shape the social security system in six countries - France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US - under population aging. Two main...

We analyze the political stability of funded social security. Using a stylized theoretical framework we study the mechanisms behind governments capturing social security assets in order to lower current taxes. The results and the driving mechanisms carry over to a fully-fledged and carefully...

The objective of this paper is to analyze the welfare effects of raising the retirement age. With aging populations, in many countries de iure retirement age has been raised. With a standard assumption that individuals prefer leisure to work, such policy necessitates some welfare deterioration....

We evaluate the welfare and macroeconomic effects of increasing the retirement age in the context of population aging. In an overlapping generations framework we simulate the increase of the retirement age by seven years under different pension systems (defined benefit, notionally defined...

The objective of this paper is to inquire the consequences of some simplifying assumptions typically made in the overlapping generations (OLG) models of pension systems and pension system reforms. This literature is largely driven by policy motivations. Consequently, the majority of the papers...

In many countries the fiscal tension associated with the global financial crisis brings about the discussion about unprivatizing the social security system. This paper employs an OLG model to assess ex ante the effects of such changes to the pension reform in Poland from 1999 as implemented in...

Pension system reforms involve fiscal consequences. In practice, a variety of fiscal closures may be implemented, while not all of them involve the same extent of distortions. This paper develops an overlapping generations model to analyze the case of a shift from pay-as-you-go defined benefit...

We document the presence of a trade-off between unemployment benefits (UB) and employment protection legislation (EPL) in the provision of insurance against labour market risk. The mix of quantity restrictions and price regulations adopted by the various countries would seem to correspond to a...