This study explores economic aspects of the market for long term care (LTC) with a special focus on Japan. First, we describe the LTC system in Japan as presently implemented, and we highlight some aspects of the program that are novel and potentially of interest to other countries seeking...

Prior literature on asset patterns among the elderly often overlooks housing wealth as a determinant of retiree wealth, particularly in the Japanese context. Yet releasing equity in housing may be a natural mechanism to boost consumption, reduce public pension liability, and mitigate the demand...

This paper evaluates the extent of adverse selection in life insurance and annuities in international markets, for both group and individual products. We also compare results with prior analyses of adverse selection in international annuity markets, focusing on the US, the UK, and Japan. Our...

This paper explores the risks and benefits of holding company stock in employer-sponsored defined contribution (DC) retirement plans. We address three questions: (1) What is the role and function of company stock in such plans? (2) Who might be affected by enhanced portfolio diversification in...

Demographic aging renders workers vulnerable to the inherent uncertainty of unfunded social security systems. This realization has set off a global wave of social security reforms, and numerous countries have now set up Individual Accounts (IA) plans in response. Strengths of IAs are that...

Recently we were asked to serve on the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security (CSSS) along with 14 other members drawn equally from both major political parties. The Commission's charge was to provide recommendations to modernize the Social Security system, restore its fiscal...

Substantial research attention has been devoted to the pension accumulation process, whereby employees and those advising them work to accumulate funds for retirement. Until recently, less analysis has been devoted to the pension decumulation process -- the process by which retirees finance...

We investigate how the Japanese pension market for funded employment-based pensions is changing and how it might be strengthened in order to better serve one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world. Public and private pensions in Japan are estimated to hold around US$3 trillion,...

After a long commitment to defined benefit (DB) pension plans for US public sect or employees, many state legislatures have introduced defined contribution (DC) plans for their public employees. In this process, investment risk which was previously borne by state DB plans has now devolved to...

In this paper we derive and compare the value of life annuity products in an international context. Our specific goal is to assess the money's worth and adverse selection impact of annuities in two countries Singapore and Australia that have mandatory DC-type retirement plans. This similarity in...