There has been skepticism from the beginning regarding the "Riester-Rente" pension scheme because it was not compulsory. From the author's point of view, this skepticism has been confirmed. The lack of commitment to the Riester pension system leads to concrete problems including debatable...

Die Skepsis, die es von Anfang an aufgrund der fehlenden Versicherungspflicht für die Riester-Rente gab, hat sich aus Sicht des Autors bestätigt. Aus der fehlenden Verpflichtung zu einer kapitalgedeckten Altersvorsorge leiten sich auch konkrete Probleme wie eine diskussionswürdige Transparenz...

Public disability insurance (DI) programs in many countries face pressure to reduce their generosity in order to remain sustainable. In this paper, we investigate the welfare effects of giving a larger role to private insurance markets in the face of public DI cuts. Exploiting a unique reform...

Public disability insurance (DI) programs in many countries face pressure to reduce their generosity in order to remain sustainable. In this paper, we investigate the welfare effects of giving a larger role to private insurance markets in the face of public DI cuts. Exploiting a unique reform...

Public disability insurance (DI) programs in many countries face pressure to reduce their generosity in order to remain sustainable. In this paper, we investigate the welfare effects of giving a larger role to private insurance markets in the face of public DI cuts. Exploiting a unique reform...

This report employs individual-level register data to study the coverage and amounts of voluntary term life insurances, the monetary losses following from the death of a breadwinner, and the life insurance gap arising as the difference of the two. The data include information on the life...

Preparing for the monetary loss associated with premature death of the breadwinner has become more relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, very little is known about how much of the financial vulnerabilities are covered by the life insurance holdings in different population groups. We...

This paper uses stochastic simulations on calibrated models to assess the optimal degree of reliance on fun ded pensions and on a particular type of unfunded (PAYG) pension. Surprisingly little is known about the optimal split between funded and unfunded systems when there are sources of...

We compute the optimal dynamic asset allocation policy for a retiree with Epstein-Zin utility. The retiree can decide how much he consumes and how much he invests in stocks, bonds, and annuities. Pricing the annuities we account for asymmetric mortality beliefs and administration expenses. We...

Socio-economic differences in longevity have fuelled a debate whether pension systems have a regressive bias favouring groups with a high life expectancy. We show that the distributional implications of such pooling depend critically on the benefit profile across age/time, which in turn is...