How should developing countries tax corporate income? This paper studies this question in Costa Rica, where firms face discontinuously higher average tax rates on profits when their revenue marginally increases. The paper combines a discontinuity and a bunching design to estimate the profit...

Pension reform is a key policy challenge in Russia. This paper examines how pension spending could increase in Russia in the absence of reforms, quantifies the impact of some recent proposals, and suggests some alternatives that would ensure public pension benefits - relative to wages - not fall...

This paper provides the first empirical assessment of the impact of life expectancy assumptions on the liabilities of private U.S. defined benefit (DB) pension plans. Using detailed actuarial and financial information provided by the U.S. Department of Labor, we construct a longevity variable...

Life-cycle funds offer an intuitive approach to retirement investing. Despite their intuitive appeal, the empirical and theoretical support for life-cycle funds is mixed. We examine life-cycle funds using dynamic optimization techniques to evaluate the optimal asset allocation over the life...

This paper estimates how much people actually receive in retirement relative to earnings before retirement when all sources of income, including income generated by homeownership, are combined. Previous studies find that middle class people need between 70 and 75 percent of their pre-retirement...

This paper addresses the relationship between defined benefit pension plans and corporate profits and examines the outlook for defined benefit plans in the wake of the bear market. Due to a soaring stock market during the extended bull market of 1982-2000, together with federal regulations and...

Every year, pension plan sponsors are required to file a return with the U.S. Department of Labor. These returns, known as the Form 5500 series, contain detailed information about the plans' finances, participants, and administrators that allows government agencies to monitor compliance with the...

The shift in pension coverage from defined benefit plans to 401(k)s has been underway since 1981. This shift is the result of three developments: 1) the addition of 401(k) provisions to existing thrift and profit sharing plans; 2) a surge of new 401(k) plan formation in the 1980s; and 3) the...

In recent decades, population has been aging fast in Brazil while old age pensions and health related spending have increased. As the population ages, the spending trend threaten to reach unsustainable levels absent reforms. Increasing the retirement age is key, but by itself will not provide...