Analyses of pension funding effects on economic growth need to differentiate between "carve-out" pension privatization in Latin America and Eastern Europe and typical "add-on" pension funding in Western Europe and North America. We find no evidence that pension privatization in Latin America and...

Analyses of pension funding effects on economic growth need to differentiate between ‘carve-out' pension privatization in Latin America and Eastern Europe and typical ‘add-on' pension funding in Western Europe and North America. We find no evidence that pension privatization in Latin America...

A belief that consumption taxation is inherently inequitable has been entrenched in a significant portion of the general public and was supported by early empirical evidence that suggested a highly regressive annual VAT incidence. However, it has been shown that much of the estimated annual VAT...

During first 15 years of their existence, mandatory private pension funds in Eastern Europe have realized rates of return that were lower and more volatile than the corresponding Pay-As-You-Go rates of return, even before the emergence of global financial crisis. Suboptimal investments in...

A number of World Bank studies have been presenting inconsistent and contradictory data on the performance of mandatory private second pillar pension funds in Eastern Europe. This paper shows that the World Bank data is upwardly biased and tangibly overstates the true second pillar performance....

In order for ‘carve-out' pension privatization to improve long-term sustainability the transition should not be predominantly debt-financed, and private pension funds should deliver (net) rates of return tangibly higher than GDP growth. We show that none of the reforming countries in Eastern...